"I would recommend this program to others, especially those I work with. The courses are great for professional development if individuals want to acquire new skills or keep their current skills up to date."
PHDA testimonials
PHDA Overall program/course experience
PHDA 04 Spatial Epidemiology and Outbreak Detection
"PHDA 03 and 04 provided useful tools for me. I had always wanted to learn to use ArcGIS software to explore health data, and have both a geography and clinical background, so PHDA 03 and PHDA 04 were especially interesting."
PHDA full testimonial
- How did you learn about the program and what motivated you to enroll?
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I was in Canada and the program seemed a perfect fit to my interests.
- Tell us about your course experience. What skills did you develop and which courses provided the greatest benefit to you?
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I thoroughly enjoyed the courses, although sometimes I had trouble keeping up. Having said that, I found the lecturers very sympathetic to my needs. It was great to develop more understanding of the analysis of administrative datasets and in particular learning how to use geocoded data.
- How have you been able to (or how do you plan to) apply your new skills in your work/research?
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I will use my skills to undertake some more specific analysis using linked data. In particular, I plan to undertake some mapping of hotspots where illicit drug use is most common. For my interests at this time I found longitudinal data analysis and geocoding the most helpful. This is because with increasing use of multiple drugs it is important to determine where outbreaks occur and be able to establish cohorts of people who use these substances and then follow over time determining predictors of change.
- What do you think were the strengths of this program? Please provide examples.
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The flexibility of the modules was very good and I appreciated learning from other students when there was something I couldn’t solve. For example when I couldn’t run a particular program, I could easily get assistance with this. Having access to previous assignments on the same topics made things much easier as well.
- Would you recommend this program to others? If so, what recommendations/suggestions would you give those interested in applying to this program?
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Yes, I would recommend this program and regularly circulate information about the courses as updates come to me.
- Any additional comments you would like to add?
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It was a really great experience and I learnt a great many new things so thank you!
PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographical Information Systems
"Both the PHDA 03 and PHDA 04 courses have made me confident working in ArcGIS, and applying principles of GIS/mapping to population health data and working on spatial analyses. In particular, what has been most helpful about these courses is applying the background theory to surveillance and research questions and walking through the analysis from start to finish, including interpretation of results."
PHDA 05 Longitudinal Analysis and Multi-level Modeling of Population Health Data
"I plan to undertake some mapping of hotspots where illicit drug use is most common. For my interests at this time, I found the longitudinal data analysis course (PHDA 05) and geocoding skills in (PHDA 03) were the most helpful. This is because with increasing use of multiple drugs it is important to determine where outbreaks occur and be able to establish cohorts of people who use these substances and then follow over time determining predictors of change."
University of British Columbia, 201-2206 East Mall, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z3
Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN) member
International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN) member
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