PHDA testimonials

"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."

"The PHDA 03 course involved a lot of work, but was structured in a way that it was easy to work through each module. The instructor provided step by step instructions for each module about how to use ArcGIS. By the end of the course, I went from someone with zero experience in GIS to someone who can understand how to interpret maps, basic tools in ArcGIS, and how to apply GIS to public health issues."

"I was browsing for some relevant programs that would complement my current job as an epidemiologist. The PHDA courses looked good, particularly the GIS ones which I wanted to learn as it hadn’t been part of my education up to that point. The coursework was comprehensive but not too time consuming. The GIS courses were fantastic and provided great information. I liked the method of instruction – videos that walked you through the steps of an assignment accompanied by PDF’s, which I thought helped me learn efficiently."

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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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"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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