Testimonials

PHDA - Overall course experience

"Allowing students to gain hands on experience remotely with software packages such as ArcMap, SAS, and Mplus while having the flexibility to work full time is invaluable. Also having the opportunity to use Population Data BC’s administrative data with these packages offered a type of learning experience that I could not have had anywhere else." > read full testimonial
Adele Balram, Data Analyst, New Brunswick Institute for Research and Data Training

PHDA 06 Health Services Program Monitoring and Evaluation

"I enjoyed the Health Evaluation course (PHDA 06). Although I am familiar with this subject area, I found the concepts were presented in an effective way. Over the 12 weeks, we put together a health evaluation proposal. Work from each weekly module contributed to this final project. I think this was an interesting way to learn about the practical aspects of Health Evaluation."
Louis Wong, Epidemiologist

PHDA 02 Epidemiological Statistics

"The Epidemiological Statistics course includes a range of topics from calculating relative risk to meta-analysis. The instructor took the time to ensure all students were able to do the assignments and the course readings included useful references. I would recommend this course for anyone who is working in population and public health and uses epidemiological methods in their employment"
Gina Martin, Research Associate, Centre for Addictions Research of BC

In-person Workshops

Multilevel and Hierarchical Linear Modeling

"The delivery of this five-day workshop was well presented. It combined theory, practical applications and training time for participants to get a hands on experience.  At the end of the course, I brought back a wealth of knowledge that I think I am ready to apply to data available at my workplace. The instructor, Dr. Bruno Zumbo, is an excellent teacher!"
Kukuh Noertjojo, Medical Analyst, WorkSafeBC

PHDA - Overall course experience

"I would highly recommend this program to anyone wishing to gain a strong foundation in GIS and data, even those individuals not directly involved in the population health field. All of the courses force the student to think critically, develop time management skills, become effective data organizers, and learn to work in a virtual team towards a common goal within very tight parameters. I found all staff related to the various components of the program very knowledgeable and considerate." > read full testimonial
Wendy de Gomez, Capital Planning Analyst, Waterloo Catholic District School Board

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"This course is a rich and nuanced exploration of the interplay of spatial associations between population health and exposure to multiple risk factors including pathogen/toxin load, socio-economic influences and ‘built environment’ indices. Well-paced and supported ‘labs’ move from mapping skills and associated ethics to the use of spatial statistics in assessing distribution in population health. Required readings are current and wide-ranging. The final project provides a wonderful opportunity to use acquired tools to explore in depth a personal research project of interest.

I highly recommend this course to all in population health – from analysts and city planners to physicians and veterinarians. The power of GIS to put “place” into the population health equation is a powerful tool. This course illuminates this exceptionally."
C. Rymes D.V.M., M.Sc., Amycus Environmental Inc

In-person Workshops

Structural Equation Modeling

"This workshop provided an excellent combination of understanding principles of SEM, how to generate and evaluate models and how to use SEM software. A great and useful workshop."
Miguel Ruz, PhD student, University of British Columbia

In-person Workshops

Introduction to Statistical Software Package R

"A good kick start to get over the initial learning curve for using R."
Anders Erikson, PhD student, University of Victoria

PHDA - Overall course experience

"I would definitely recommend this program to my colleagues or others who would like to develop analytical skills and knowledge in data analysis and the use of health data.

I benefited by having an access to various analytic tools and different types/sources of health administrative data. They included a good balance of practice and theory.  I did not find these kinds of courses were available to me when I was at University.  In addition, I had very practical hands-on practice using statistical analytic tools such as SAS or ArcGIS which are not freely available for public use." > read full testimonial
Youn Choi, Senior Researcher

PHDA - Overall course experience

"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."
Louis Wong, Epidemiologist

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"I enjoyed all the courses. In particular, I found the Population Health and GIS (PHDA 03) course very interesting and fun as I had never worked in this subject area before. The instructor and course content provided step by step directions and good support."
Navdeep Sandhu, Research Assistant, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"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." > read full testimonial
Lucinda Burns, Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"The PHDA 03 Population and GIS course provided me with a skill set that I would have had difficulty learning on my own. I was able to apply training from this course and the Epidemiological Statistics course (PHDA 02) to some of my current work that is assessing how we can improve quality of life related follow-up for British Columbian cancer patients after they have received their treatment. We were interested in seeing how follow-up for British Columbian patients differs with different levels of access to resources based on their geographical location.  The analysis would have been much more difficult without the skills that I had learned in these two courses." > read full testimonial
Brent Parker, Population & Radiation Oncology Research Coordinator, BC Cancer Agency

PHDA - Overall course experience

"The flexibility of timing due to the entirely online nature of the program stood out to me. I could work on things when I had the time, which I think is a great feature for people who are generally working full time. I also liked the mix of discussion and individual assignments in the courses; getting to hear others’ opinions and experiences was very useful. > read full testimonial
Karyn Fulcher, Postdoctoral Fellow

PHDA 06 Health Services Program Monitoring and Evaluation

"I enjoyed the PHDA 06 Health Services Program Monitoring and Evaluation course the most. Although I had taken an evaluation course in my Master’s program, I found the PHDA 06 course very good at clarifying information and dividing the evaluation process into very practical/applied steps/stages."
Navdeep Sandhu, Research Assistant, Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University

PHDA - Overall course experience

"One of the greatest strengths of the program is the access to the Secure Research Training Lab. It holds practical, well written, easy to follow lab activities in data analytics and a very used de-identified BC Heath Dataset as well as other health related training datasets for applied learning. This provided an excellent learning environment for professional development training in data analytics." > read full testimonial
Nino Samson, Strategy Analyst, BC Ministry of Health

PHDA 02 Epidemiological Statistics

"Epidemiological Statistics was a great refresher for advanced statistics using sample data sets and applied examples. It was a very useful and informative course."
Jenn Dixon, Research Associate in the field of Population and Public Health

PHDA - Overall course experience

"I would recommend this program to anyone working in the public health field that is handling or interpreting data and looking to update or acquire new skills. The courses were of high quality, good value and appropriate for anyone at the introductory or intermediate level.

For a program that is delivered completely online, each course was organized and delivered very well. Most of the instructors were very quick with their replies to questions from students. All of the courses used practical examples to explain the material which I found really helpful for understanding how to apply the concepts in practice. Even though the courses required a bit more work and time commitment than I initially planned for, I felt each of them challenged me and taught me new concepts and skills that I can take away and use immediately in my work." > read full testimonial
Jenn Dixon, Research Associate in the field of Population and Public Health

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"Courses which benefited me the most are PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information System (GIS) and PHDA 04 Spatial Epidemiology and Outbreak Detection.

I am really satisfied with these courses especially the hands-on experience gained while using ArcMap to map diseases and assess spatial dependences. Skills developed include generating choropleth map, joining attribute tables to shapefile and perform geographically weighted regressions."
Samuel Essien, PhD Candidate, School of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan

In-person Workshops

Structural Equation Modeling

"Complex material made interesting by an experienced, upbeat instructor. SEM opens up so many doors to dealing with population data."
Sherri Tillotson, Coordinator, Evaluation and Monitoring, BC Cancer Agency

PHDA - Overall course experience

"I feel this is a very unique program that combines the use of data analytics, statistical software and focused learning objectives related to the field of health. I also appreciated the fact that it was a fully online program with well-organized lectures, readings and remotely accessed lab work in health data analytics.

Overall the program was very helpful to my knowledge and skill development in the field of healthcare analytics.  The program exceeded my expectations particularly because of the remotely accessed data analytic lab work that was more challenging than I anticipated. This work was very practical and very much oriented to real life case examples. The calibre of students in my courses was also very high as most were working professionals who brought valuable experience and knowledge to the discussion forums and project work. " > read full testimonial
Alexey Skiba, Data Analyst, College of Registered Nurses of British Columbia

PHDA 01 Working with Administrative Data

"The course was well structured. Through the course, I learned: a formal approach to developing, structuring and answering a research question using administrative data; how to clearly define the study population; how to develop a flow chart to illustrate, and guide, the development of an analytical dataset; and SAS skills. It was an excellent course and a good refresher for me, as it has been 5 years since I’ve done data analysis. A number of course assignments required me to pair with a fellow student and undergo peer review of one another’s code. It was interesting to see how my peer structured their code to produce their dataset. I enjoyed and learned a lot from this exchange. The flexibility of distance learning meant that it was possible to complete work at my own pace and schedule. It was also helpful to learn from students in different locations, who worked in related fields but had different strengths, skills and perspectives.

Finally, this course gave me experience working with administrative datasets and tools that can be difficult to access on the job. The opportunity to work with samples of real data exposed me to some of the challenges I could face at work in learning, cleaning, formatting and analyzing the data.  I would highly recommend this course and the PHDA program to my colleagues. It’s a well-structured and organized program and provides a good theoretical and practical approach to population health data analysis."
Esther Parker, Senior Policy Analyst, BC Ministry of Health

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"I took the PHDA 03 course to update my data analysis and GIS skills so that I could apply them to my current position as senior policy analyst in environmental health. I have a number of years of policy analysis experience, which I felt would be complemented by focused studies on the application of data analysis and GIS to population and public health policy questions. The course provided a comprehensive overview of how GIS can be used to investigate various population and public health questions including: mapping administrative data; use of spatial targeting, tailoring and generating to inform health policy development; estimating access to health care services; chronic and communicable disease surveillance; and environmental health and exposure assessment. The flexibility of distance learning meant that it was possible to complete work at my own pace and schedule. It was also helpful to learn from students in different locations, who worked in related fields but had different strengths, skills and perspectives.

I would highly recommend this course and the PHDA program to my colleagues. It’s a well-structured and organized program and provides a good theoretical and practical approach to population health data analysis."
Esther Parker, Senior Policy Analyst, BC Ministry of Health

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"The PHDA 03 course involved a lot of work, but was structured in a way that it was easy to work through each module. The instructor provided step by step instructions for each module about how to use ArcGIS. By the end of the course, I went from someone with zero experience in GIS to someone who can understand how to interpret maps, basic tools in ArcGIS, and how to apply GIS to public health issues."
Jenn Dixon, Research Associate in the field of Population and Public Health

PHDA - Overall course experience

"The Secure Research Training Lab (SRTL) was the best. It was a bit complicated to start with for the first time, but I quickly got used to logging on and working in the environment. It’s well worth the effort to be able to do hands-on work with data, with peer and instructor support, and very good technical support (the few times I needed it).

Another strength of the program is being able to work with motivated and knowledgeable peers, learn from one another through well-moderated forum discussions and collaboration. Having dedicated and clear instructors who are patient with distance ed/online format was also a major advantage. Although you are only required to take four courses to achieve the certificate, I took all six courses available.  I felt all courses were very positive experiences for me, with top notch students and teachers who were very engaged and supportive." > read full testimonial
Sophy Zhang, MPH, Program Administrative Coordinator, Canadian Canadian Mental Health Association, BC Division

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographic Information Systems

"The courses that provided me the greatest benefit included the Population Health and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Spatial Epidemiology and Outbreak Detection.

Using the GIS and SAS skills that I learned from the PHDA program, I was able to create a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) layer using GIS software, which showed peak greenness for the entire country over a ten-year period. Using this data and other administrative databases a team of researchers led by Dr. Dan Crouse and myself, conducted a research study that looked at how living by residential greenspace can impact longevity." > read full testimonial
Adele Balram, Data Analyst, New Brunswick Institute for Research and Data Training

PHDA - Overall course experience

"The program has given me valuable skills and practice in a variety of statistical software. The PHDA program team including professors, IT and admin staff were all very helpful and a very supportive part of my program experience. I also enjoyed studying with fellow colleagues who had a broad range of work and research skills. The calibre of student in all my PHDA courses was very impressive and many were very willing to share their knowledge and analytic expertise. For this reason I really benefited from the partner and group work in many of the courses. Although the online format of the courses came with some weakness (as you don’t get to connect with people in person), I really appreciated how the asynchronous delivery provided flexibility to work and take courses at the same time." > read full testimonial
Jennifer McConnell, MHHS, Doctoral Candidate, Social Dimensions of Health, University of Victoria

PHDA 05 Longitudinal Analysis and Multi-level Modeling of Population Health Data

"The courses I found to be of greatest benefit to me and my work were PHDA 01 (Working with Administrative Data) and PHDA 05 (Longitudinal Analysis and Multi-level Modeling of Population Health Data). These courses provided practical skills that I find I apply regularly to my job, and made me much more comfortable with using data analytic programs like SAS."
Sarah Costa, Health Economist, Canadian Centre for Applied Research in Cancer Control, BC Cancer Agency