PHDA testimonials

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.

I learned about the program through emails from PopDataBC. I have been following PopDataBC since the organization was introduced to me during my MPH degree at UBC. I was motivated to enroll in the PHDA courses that I chose, because I was not offered the opportunity to take such courses during my MPH. I had a lot of background in epidemiological and statistical theory, with some coding experience introduced through my statistics courses, but not as much practical application of the theory as I would have liked or that I needed for my job.

The courses I have taken so far are Population Health and GIS (PHDA03) and Spatial Epidemiology (PHDA04). Both have made me confident working in ArcGIS, and applying principles of GIS/mapping to population health data and working on spatial analyses. In particular, what has been most helpful about these courses is applying the background theory to surveillance and research questions and walking through the analysis from start to finish, including interpretation of results.

There are two areas that I hope to apply these skills in my work: one is improved visualization of population health data where a geographic component is present and relevant, and another is utilizing methodologies where unstable rates can be smoothed by drawing from the rates of neighbouring geographic areas. Where I work, small numbers are consistently an issue in producing stable and comparable rates.

Strengths included hands-on application of concepts (through the labs), responsive and supportive instructors, and reading materials that helped with learning the concepts. For example, the final projects allowed us to develop a practical research question, clean and analyze the required datasets, produce maps and analyses, and interpret results, which would mirror a typical project in the workplace.

Yes, I would definitely recommend PHDA courses to others. I would suggest ensuring there is ample time outside of your regular job to complete the coursework, as I found the readings were quite time consuming (although very interesting).