PHDA testimonials

"I would like to recommend PHDA courses to others. I believe the program is very practical and useful to those working in the public health field. It provides a good opportunity for the development of a future career plan.

I learned how to use several popular software programs such as SAS, R, ArcGIS and Mplus. All of them are very helpful. The PHDA 06 course about Health Services Program Monitoring and Evaluation helped me evaluate my work program. "

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"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."

"Although I have experience in the area of Population Health, I had no formal training working with layered data sets. The Working with Administrative Data course was good as it included making a data dictionary and use of admin data. One of my ongoing projects at work involves assessing trends in surgery wait times for lung cancer patients. This work involved analysis of local data as a pilot project looking for trends in regional variations; I used techniques learned in PHDA 01 to facilitate this analysis. I am happy that I took PHDA 01 before PHDA 02 as I didn’t have strong SAS skills and PHDA 01 includes an introduction to SAS skills from the very beginning."

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The strengths of the program are the course offerings (which are attractive at first glance), the instructors, the practical work/applications, and the support/information network of peers. The work with PopData data was very engaging and a privilege – I hope that continues to be offered.

I would also strongly recommend it to someone who wishes to transition into epidemiology or public health-related professions before they pursue graduate level studies. These courses may offer the training they need."

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"I found a strength of the program to be the engagement of the other students, who are usually all from diverse backgrounds with varying levels of experience with the content. It was helpful to learn from each other. The workload was also quite manageable for those who are working full-time in addition to the courses. The teachers also all seemed knowledgeable and passionate about the topics, and were willing to help students answer their questions or provide assistance for the course projects."

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