Doctoral course: “Methods for life-course epidemiology” (1.5 credits)
Dates
December 5-9, 2016(full days)
This advanced course is arranged within the Swedish Interdisciplinary Graduate School in register-based research (SINGS), website:
Venue
Institute of Environmental Medicine, KarolinskaInstitutet, Stockholm
Target group
This course is of particular interest to those who currently work or plan to work in the field of life-course epidemiology and those who apply designs from life-course epidemiology to register-based research. The course is of relevance for doctoral students in the fields of epidemiology, public health, sociology, demography, psychology, statistics, health economics, and other medical and social sciences. Post-doctoral fellows are also welcome to apply.
Specific entry requirements
This is an advanced course and prerequisite knowledge are the following courses, or corresponding courses:"Epidemiology I: Introduction to Epidemiology", "Biostatistics I: Introduction for epidemiologists", "Epidemiology II: Design of epidemiological studies", "Biostatistics II: Logistic regression for epidemiologists" and "Biostatistics III: Survival analysis for epidemiologists").
Content
Life-course epidemiology studies long term effects on later health of physical or social exposures during gestation, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood and later adult life.
Studying the inter-relationships of biological and social variables over time requires longitudinal information spanning broad periods of life. It also involves considerations of complex underlying structures and multiple pathways that in most cases cannot easily be dealt with using standard regression models. Data originating from different sources, such as the routine registries, are powerful research tools in life-course epidemiology, however, they are also a source of additional analytical difficulties deriving from the varying quality and coverage of their data as well as changes in recording practices over time and across registries.
During the course we shall review, discussand apply different approaches to addressing common challenges in register-based, life course and intergenerational research through both methodological innovations and adaptation of existing statistical methods. Examples of techniques to be discussed and applied include methods for visualizing and modelling changes in categorical variables,modelling the effects of binary exposure variables over the life-course, application of biometric models and techniques for mediation analyses.
After completing the course, the participants should be able to identify strengths and weaknesses of common epidemiological designs as applied to life-course research and be familiar witha range of statisticalmethods forlife-course epidemiology.
Teaching and learning activities
The teaching will be based on lectures, seminars, computer labs and small group tutorials.
Course director and teachers
IlonaKoupil, MD DSc, Professor, Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS), Stockholm University/KarolinskaInstitutet & Department of Public Health Sciences, KarolinskaInstitutet(email address: )
Gita Mishra, MSc PhD, Professor, School of Public Health, University of Queensland, Australia
Bianca De Stavola, MSc PhD, Professor, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Rhian Daniel, MA MSc PhD, Lecturer, Faculty of Epidemiology and Population Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom
Application
Application latest October 31, 2016. Apply here:
Please contact Anita Berglund (email ), SINGS for any questions.