"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."
"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."
"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."
I learned about the PHDA program through browsing on web and was motivated to get more training in population health data analysis while working full-time.
Although the course load was a bit heavy at times, I think I’ve learned a lot and developed hands-on experience in analyzing population health data using SAS and ArcGIS.
I have not yet had a chance to utilize all the knowledge and skills I’ve gained in my current work, but definitely have a better understanding of results that are analyzed using ArcGIS.
The strengths of this program include: good organization of coursework, exposure to variety of relevant topics, hands-on experience using several analytical software, excellent support and feedback by instructors, and a flexible schedule.
I would definitely recommend colleagues and others to take this program for further professional development.
My program experience has been great and thank you for all the support I received from instructors and staff members in the PHDA program.
I was in Canada and the program seemed a perfect fit to my interests.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, I would recommend this program and regularly circulate information about the courses as updates come to me.
It was a really great experience and I learnt a great many new things so thank you!
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Health Data Research Network Canada (HDRN) member
International Population Data Linkage Network (IPDLN) member
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