PHDA testimonials

I Iearned about the program through the UVic Continuing Studies website while I was an under grad at UVic. I later worked for the Provincial government. As a government employee I was eligible to get financial support for professional development training. The PHDA program was a good fit for the analytic skills I needed. I already had some experience working with Administrative data.

I found the courses I took, PHDA 01 Working with Administrative Data, PHDA 02 Epidemiological Statistics, PHDA 03 Population Health and GIS and PHDA 04 Spatial Epidemiology and Outbreak Detection, all followed in suite to cement my knowledge and skills in methods and research design. The first two courses, PHDA 01 and PHDA 02 were more of a review/refresher for me from my previous academic and work experience. The PHDA 01 course included learning SAS skills and creating your own study. The PHDA 02 course focused more on practical analytic work and less on statistical theory.  My favourite course was PHDA 04. It applied all the background/analytic skills I had learned within previous PHDA courses and taught me new geospatial skills.

My new skills would have proven useful in my previous role as a policy analyst for the provincial government, however I have switched positions. I intended on using my SAS skills and geospatial analysis tools to analyze the MSP data I had access to.

My new job is as a strategy analyst and the certificate has provided me knowledge about the potential use of administrative data to inform decision making. In completing this course, I have added another domain of knowledge which I can consider when developing strategic plans related to IM/IT.

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 useful 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.

Yes, I would definitely recommend this program to others.  For those just starting the program within the PHDA 01 course, I would recommend that they work carefully through the SAS components and try to keep their project work simple. It is also best to take one course at a time if you are working or taking full time studies.

Prior to coming to Canada, I had worked in the area of math and statistics. When I moved to Canada I pursued work in Data Management and then became particularly interested in the field of data analytics for health services. As a result, I searched online for a related program in this area and found information on the PHDA program. I had taken previous training courses in business and data analytics so the PHDA program seemed like a perfect way to expand my knowledge and skills within the field of population health.

The Working with Administrative Data (PHDA 01) course was a perfect course for me. It gave me a good introduction to the field of Population Health and provided a good refresher for my SAS skills.

The Epidemiological Statistics (PHDA 02) course was a fair bit of review for me as I have a strong statistical background. As a result, the health specific focus of the course and related terminology provided the greatest value to me.

The Population Health and GIS (PHDA 03) course was the most interesting but also the hardest course I took due to the project work and data management skills that were involved.

As I am now working in the healthcare field, I feel the health terminology and related analytic work I completed in the program have been helpful in my current workplace.  In particular, I am using some of these skills in my reporting projects. Within the next couple of years I also expect that my work will be incorporating more geospatial skills so the foundation skills I have learned in this area will also be beneficial.

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.

Yes, I would definitely recommend the program to others.

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.