PHDA testimonials

I learned about the program from observing LinkedIn profiles of people working in health research, public health, and at health authorities. At the time, I only had some work experience somewhat related to health but no health degrees and was experiencing difficulty ‘getting my foot in the door’ without the latter. The University of Victoria and this program were not familiar to me aside from the LinkedIn exposure, since I was not familiar with the offerings on the West Coast.

For online and greatly asynchronous courses, the course experiences were good, overall. The content, readings, and assignments/practice were very interesting. I look forward to referencing them and returning to them for refreshers. There are many optional resources I look forward to viewing.

However, it did feel like there was quite a lot of work in each course, from readings to forum posts to assignments. I was working full-time and was glad I only took one course at a time … since each semester was a lot of work! I am happy I chose a diverse set of courses, which were on topics I am very interested in. One course focussed on GIS skills, another on administrative data analysis skills, another focussed on epidemiological quantitative data analysis, and yet another included health program evaluation skills. These courses and their lessons were very memorable. While some specifics with SAS or ArcGIS will need to be refreshed the next time I work with them, overall principles, some common procedures, and where to find helpful guides were retained.

It is difficult to say which course provided the greatest benefit. Unfortunately, although mapping and spatial analysis are interests of mine, they are not usually relevant or appropriate for the full-time work I do. The administrative data, epidemiological statistics, and evaluation courses were great introductions to those disciplines and methods.

For my personal research and projects, I would like to use all the new skills I learned during this certificate. For my current job role, the evaluation course reinforced work planning, stakeholder engagement planning, and reporting planning skills -- their corresponding activities are prevalent at my job. The quantitative analysis and administrative data skills will be relevant to my professional and personal work.

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 BC data was very engaging and a privilege – I hope that continues to be offered -- despite remote connections being a hassle sometimes.

The peer reviews were always very helpful and so were the activities/peer community in the course forums. I appreciated that one class only required a number of weekly posts for full participation grades. I personally found it daunting to participate through forum posts/responses, and usually dreaded writing mine addressing specific discussion questions.

I would completely recommend this program to others. I have already recommended it to a close colleague who asked about it.

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.

I would suggest that they take only one PHDA course and devote all their educational time to that one course (i.e., no other courses from elsewhere). I would also recommend they try to keep up as much as possible with the pace of the courses and to really consider the timing of various milestones in the courses – as the courses vary in intensity at different points. If their course involves remote connections to analysis software and PopData BC data, they should expect to spend a lot of time practicing and completing those assignments.

This is an incredible certificate program. It can be labour intensive and sometimes grueling/exhausting, but everything feels earned. I am amazed at how much I have learned and applied in only four courses (all on different and almost exclusive topics). Prior to this certificate, I thought I would need to pursue a degree in health to make a career transition. I feel confident that I have the necessary skills or at least the foundations for these skills -- and that pursuing another master’s or a committing to a PhD are not the only ways to acquire such skills.

I learned about the PHDA program from the Director of the Social Dimensions of Health while I was taking the program at UVic. I was interested in the PHDA courses as a way to expand my skill set, enhance my knowledge of statistical software programs and gain practical skills to assist me with my PhD dissertation.

I enjoyed all the courses and the practical skills they provided especially with statistical software such as SAS, Mplus, and ArcGIS. I think I gained the most benefit from the PHDA 05 course and the PHDA 03 course. The PHDA 05 in Longitudinal Analysis and Multilevel modeling helped me gain skills in Mplus software and get an introduction to modeling. This work was very helpful in preparing me for a more advanced longitudinal modeling credit course I took at UVic last year. The PHDA 03 course in Population Health and GIS introduced me to a brand new subject area as well as practical skills in the use of ArcGIS.

I have been able to use the applied skills I learned in my role as a research assistant to help with grant applications. I will also be able to use these skills in the development of my dissertation. I plan to document the statistical software and analytic skills I have learned in all the PHDA courses on my CV. I know these skills will make me more marketable for future job opportunities.

The program has given me valuable skills and practice in a variety of statistical software. The PHDA program team including professors, IT and admin staff were all very helpful and a very supportive part of my program experience. I also enjoyed studying with fellow colleagues who had a broad range of work and research skills. The calibre of student in all my PHDA courses was very impressive and many were very willing to share their knowledge and analytic expertise. For this reason I really benefited from the partner and group work in many of the courses. Although the online format of the courses came with some weakness (as you don’t get to connect with people in person), I really appreciated how the asynchronous delivery provided flexibility to work and take courses at the same time. I also appreciated having transcripts of all the course video presentations for easy reference.

I have and do recommend this program to others. Some of my colleagues, whose work focuses more on qualitative rather than quantitative data, are a bit intimidated to consider the PHDA courses. For others who feel the same way I would certainly recommend Working with Administrative Data (PHDA 01) as a course that any research student would benefit from. I would also suggest that program applicants try to take PHDA 01 and PHDA 02 prior to PHDA 05. Although you can take courses in any order, I found the PHDA 05 course in Longitudinal Analysis and Multi-level modeling to be the most advanced level PHDA course I took.

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).

I learned about the program while pursuing work at the BC Cancer Agency.  It was good timing as I was not sure about my professional development plans for that year. I saw the program as a good opportunity to development new skills I could use in my work where I have a Population Health related role. Although I have experience in this area, I had no formal training working with layered data sets. The Working with Administrative Data course outline looked good as it included making a data dictionary and use of admin data; the other courses looked very relevant to my work needs too.

I decided to take the program as I was looking for in-Canada certificate level courses I could take to further advance my knowledge in preparation to pursue further graduate level training. As a research coordinator based in Kelowna, I did not have many local professional development opportunities in the area of population health so the online structure of the program was very beneficial for me.

Overall the program was really a very good experience. The courses I took included: PHDA 01 Working with Administrative Data, PHDA 02 Epidemiological Statistics, PHDA 03 Population Health and GIS and PHDA 06 Health Services Program Monitoring and Evaluation. I wouldn’t rate one course as better than the other as I feel they all contributed very well to my overall learning. 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. I would therefore recommend that if people don’t have SAS experience they should take PHDA 01 before PHDA 02. I also found that PHDA 06 was one of the most practical courses. I was able to apply the skills that I was learning to a program evaluation that I was leading within the Infection and Control Department at Interior Health Authority. Being able to directly apply the knowledge I was gaining in the course made an amazing difference to my skill development. Overall, it was a great learning experience and really provided valuable overarching guidance to my work. It supported my work in finalizing a questionnaire for stakeholders and reporting findings to Interior Health.

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 also found the PHDA 02 Epidemiological Statistics course really assisted my skill development in multivariate modeling. Similarly, the PHDA 03 Population and GIS course provided me with a skill set that I would have had difficulty learning on my own. I was able to apply training from these two courses to some of my current work that is assessing how we can improve quality of life related follow-up for British Columbian cancer patients after they have received their treatment.  For example, I was involved with a study that looked at using internet technologies as a means of following up with patients that had been treated with radiation for their prostate cancer. We were interested in seeing how follow-up for British Columbian patients differs with different levels of access to resources based on their geographical location. Our project showed that internet based means of health monitoring might be a feasible option, although participation rates were much lower in regional areas with limited access to high quality wireless internet connectivity. The analysis would have been much more difficult without the skills that I had learned in the PHDA program.

Anyone looking to build on their experience in Population Health in a practical sense or those working in the field would find this program an excellent opportunity. I would also recommend the program to those working on their Masters or PhD’s in areas of Population Health. I found the structure of the program was good. The workload wasn’t more or less than I expected. If individuals haven’t taken an online course before, they may feel a heavier workload initially. I think the 12 week time frame for each of the courses was good.  Extending the time beyond 12 weeks could get confusing and less than 12 weeks would not be enough time to cover all the course content adequately. For myself, I was very glad to complete the certificate within one year.

I would definitely recommend this program to others interested in working in this field and I have recommended the program to several individuals, including graduates pursuing a career tract in health analytics and medical statistics/epidemiology.  For those with an interest in health analytics and with a technical background in computer science, I think the PHDA courses can support the development of more practical and applied clinical tools and skills. For those with an interest in epidemiology or health services research, the teaching on use of large databases and study design was very informative.  In addition, the PHDA 06 course assists with learning useful skills for individuals wishing to transfer from a clinical to an administrative or quality improvement role.

For those who are interested in applying to the program, I would recommend that they look at the course outlines and choose ones that are relevant to their work place or educational needs.  For those working on their PhD’s or Masters, they could look into how some of the courses might be able to be part of their studies. I think for graduate students, many of the courses could be really helpful. It is a unique program for individuals working in British Columbia as it enables individuals to use BC specific data.