PHDA testimonials

If you would like to specify which course(s) you would like to see testimonials for, you may do so by selecting the course(s) from the list below and hitting the APPLY filter button. You may select more than one course. Otherwise, the testimonials are listed below, in random order.

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographical Information Systems

"Both the PHDA 03 and PHDA 04 courses 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."

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How did you learn about the program and what motivated you to enroll in the PHDA course(s) you chose?: I learned about the PHDA program through researching continuing education certificates focused on population-level health administrative analysis. I was motivated to do so as I am particularly interested in health services research during the end-of-life phase.
Tell us about your course experience. What skills did you develop and which courses provided the greatest benefit to you?: Overall, I had a positive program experience. I greatly appreciated the asynchronous format as it allowed me to develop my skills without risking my other professional commitments. I found PHDA05 (Longitudinal Analysis and Multi-level Modelling of Population Health Data) to be the most rewarding as it exposed me to higher level quantitative analyses. In addition, I found PHDA03 (Population Health and Geographic Information Systems) very interesting as it provided applicable GIS uses for health services research.
How do you plan to apply your new skills in your work/research?: I believe the skills I have learned through this program will be directly relevant to my current research interests. Also, 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.
What do you think were the strengths of the course(s) you completed? Please provide examples.: The collaborative activities throughout the various courses were greatly appreciated, despite the asynchronous format!
Would you recommend PHDA courses to others? If so, what recommendations/suggestions would you give those interested in completing these courses?: Absolutely – the PHDA program is a great program for anyone who is interested in further exploring population-level analyses. For prospective students, I recommend honing on your SAS skills prior to program completion. While not necessary, having prior experience using SAS is beneficial to successfully completing courses.
Any additional comments that you would like to add?: Overall, my experience was largely positive. The instructors are very knowledgeable and accessible to students, and the program staff are always helpful!

PHDA 03 Population Health and Geographical Information Systems

"I plan to undertake some mapping of hotspots where illicit drug use is most common. For my interests at this time, I found the longitudinal data analysis course (PHDA 05) and geocoding skills in (PHDA 03) were 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."

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How did you learn about the program and what motivated you to enroll?: I was browsing for some relevant programs that would complement my current job as an epidemiologist. This one caught my eye (and I went to UVic in the past) – the 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.
Tell us about your course experience. What skills did you develop and which courses provided the greatest benefit to you?: It was really good. The coursework was comprehensive but not too time consuming. The GIS courses were fantastic and provided great information, and the other courses were also relevant to my work (the program evaluation course and the working with admin data course).
How have you been able to (or how do you plan to) apply your new skills in your work/research?: Yes – I signed up to learn GIS, and I have been able to use some of those skills in my job.
What do you think were the strengths of this program? Please provide examples.: 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.
Would you recommend this program to others? If so, what recommendations/suggestions would you give those interested in applying to this program?: Yes – in fact I have… I recommended this to colleague of mine at another health unit in Ontario who recently got hired as an Epidemiologist. She hadn’t had much education in the area and was looking for good programs so I mentioned this one, and she signed up.
Any additional comments you would like to add about the program or ways we can improve the educational experience?: Great program overall – all very relevant to my profession.

PHDA 01 Working with Administrative Data

"The course was well structured. Through the course, I learned: a formal approach to developing, structuring and answering a research question using administrative data; how to clearly define the study population; how to develop a flow chart to illustrate, and guide, the development of an analytical dataset; and SAS skills. It was an excellent course and a good refresher for me, as it has been 5 years since I’ve done data analysis. A number of course assignments required me to pair with a fellow student and undergo peer review of one another’s code. It was interesting to see how my peer structured their code to produce their dataset. I enjoyed and learned a lot from this exchange. The flexibility of distance learning meant that it was possible to complete work at my own pace and schedule. It was also helpful to learn from students in different locations, who worked in related fields but had different strengths, skills and perspectives.

Finally, this course gave me experience working with administrative datasets and tools that can be difficult to access on the job. The opportunity to work with samples of real data exposed me to some of the challenges I could face at work in learning, cleaning, formatting and analyzing the data. I would highly recommend this course and the PHDA program to my colleagues. It’s a well-structured and organized program and provides a good theoretical and practical approach to population health data analysis."

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PHDA testimonials

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