Spring 2016

Instruction in the methods of systematic review: development of a research question and a protocol, identification of primary research studies, abstraction of data, determination of summary estimates, evaluation of heterogeneity, evaluation of publication bias, meta-regression, and subgroup and sensitivity analysis.

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Design and conduct a simple systematic review
• Critique a published systematic review

These monthly seminars provide a support group for discussing the design or conduct of trainees' studies and for critique of contemporary clinical research literature.

This course will teach the principles and applied methods of community engaged research, including defining the community and partnership models for identifying relevant research questions, developing and implementing study designs, interpreting and disseminating findings, and scaling-up studies for translational implementation research. Partnership models will include working with community clinicians, community-based organizations, and health systems and public health agencies.

At the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Define the key principles of community-engaged research;
• Describe the benefits of community-engaged research for the scientific validity, impact, and ethical conduct of research;
• Identify challenges to community engagement in research and strategies to overcome these challenges; and
• Apply the principles and methods of community-engaged research to the student's own research program.

The class will emphasize the determinants of disease incidence, and the challenges of causal inference from observational studies. We will review alternative study designs, and equip students to propose alternative approaches to evaluating a research question. In particular, we want students to understand the trade-offs implicit in any particular chosen design, relating to sample size and generalizability, measurement validity and precision, and internal validity. These considerations will be contextualized within extant literature on chronic disease epidemiology, focusing on particular 'hot-topic' theoretical debates, such as early life sensitive periods, the obesity epidemic, determinants of dementia, and cohort trends in chronic disease incidence and prevalence.

At the conclusion of the class, students will be able to:

• Articulate specific, testable hypotheses regarding determinants of chronic disease and how chronic diseases influence functional outcomes.
• Describe how proposed research questions contribute to active debates in chronic disease epidemiology, including the origins of the obesity epidemic, cohort trends in cardiovascular disease, cross-national differences in chronic disease incidence and prevalence, early life influences on dementia and cardiovascular disease.
• Propose alternative study designs (e.g., case-control, cohort, quasi-experimental, or randomized trial) to test hypotheses.
• Articulate advantages and disadvantages of alternative designs, considering the research question, exposure, and outcome under consideration.
• Select appropriate statistical approaches for data analysis, considering the research question, data source, and measures available.
• Describe and estimate the magnitude of potential sources of bias in observational, quasi-experimental, or randomized studies, including confounding, selection bias, missing data, and incorrect measurement.
• Distinguish between the goals of etiologic and prognostic studies.
• Review applied quantitative articles in chronic disease epidemiology, summarize research questions, and identify pros and cons of: study design, measurement approach, and analytic approach for the specific research question.