PHDA testimonials

"I found PHDA 03 (Population Health and Geographic Information Systems) very interesting as it provided applicable GIS uses for health services research. I plan on increasingly incorporating GIS analyses in my health services research in order to understand another dimension of care accessibility during the end-of-life phase. "

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"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."

"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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"I think the highly trained, expert instructors, who are approachable and provide excellent feedback are a major strength. Certainly, the small class sizes allow for that individualized feedback and a continual dialogue with instructors in the discussion boards as well. I think the Moodle course site is very easy to use, and in general, the courses were very well organized.

Through the program, I came to learn about the enormous benefits of using already-collected administrative health data, and the process for doing so. I think my skills with SAS and ArcGIS will be the most useful to me, but the larger concepts of data integrity, (PHDA 01), what type of analysis is used in certain situations (PHDA 02), and considerations when doing spatial analysis (PHDA 04) are immensely important as well."

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"I would recommend the program to working professionals, researchers, and graduate students.

The program had many strengths including: excellent, experienced instructors for each of the courses; use of fellow students as peers to give feedback on assignments (this was a particular strength of the PHDA06 course in Health Evaluation and Program Monitoring); and discussion forums that promoted exchange of information amongst students using real life examples".

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