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Saturday, September 11, 2010
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (free of charge – registration is suggested)
Workshop A -Minority Affairs Committee Scientific, “HEALTH DISPARITIES: DEFINITION, MEASUREMENTS, DETERMINANTS, AND CONTROVERSIES”
The mission of the Minority Affairs Committee of the American College of Epidemiology is to increase minority representation in the epidemiology profession and to recommend actions that increase the likelihood of significantepidemiologic researchon health issues important to racial/ethnic minority populations. During this year’s American College of Epidemiology Annual Conference, we dedicate our all-day Scientific Workshop to issues related to HEALTH DISPARITIES: DEFINITION, MEASUREMENTS, DETERMINANTS, AND CONTROVERSIES.
Health disparities in the US are on the rise affecting low-income Americans, racial and ethnic minorities. The current unemployment crisis most likely will make health disparities worse. The goal of this workshop is to present essentials of health disparities and epidemiology, followed by presentations describing measurement and determinant of health disparities, and a discussion of related controversies by leaders in the field. Specifically we’ll explore topics on the:
Definition and Measurement of Health Disparities
Social Determinants and Health Disparities
Minorities and Need of Health Care Reform
Intersection of Racism and Health Disparities
Controversies on Health Disparities | Detailed Workshop Agenda
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM (free of charge for students – registration required)
MAC Workshop B – Health Services Research and Health Disparities
Preliminary Schedule(starting on Saturday and continuing on Sunday)
The purpose of this workshop, to be held on September 11-12, 2010, in San Francisco, California, during the weekend previous to the Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Epidemiology, is to provide minority students of epidemiology, and interested epidemiologist in this topic, with an overview of the field of health services research, and a picture of the range of experiences, curricula, syllabi and competencies provided by a sample of experts from the AHRQ training centers’ programs. Key speakers selected for this Workshop are very distinguished scholars who are currently directing training centers grants from AHRQ or the Robert W. Johnson Foundation. Workshop facilitators will be recruited among senior epidemiologists of the College to provide personalized input to participants on their work presented in a scientific poster format.
Current students from these training centers will have opportunities to share their experience, in a poster format, with the health services research experts, and with epidemiologists from the Minority Affairs Committee currently working on issues to decrease racial/ethnic health disparities in the US.
The event will provide an opportunity to bring together faculty and students from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality training sites in California, and Texas and of twenty ethnic/racial minority qualified students near graduation from accredited MPH and graduate programs in Epidemiology throughout the US.
The specific aims of the Workshop are:
- To share and disseminate among students of epidemiology of ethnic/racial minority backgrounds, health disparities research findings related to major disparities and research comparing the benefits and harms of different interventions and strategies to prevent, diagnose, treat and monitor the health conditions in “real world” settings.
- To provide an overview of pre-doctoral, doctoral and post-doctoral training opportunities in health services research, experiences, curricula, syllabi and competencies provided in select training centers funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- To publish in Annals of Epidemiology, a manuscript on the topic of Epidemiology and Health Services Research based on lecture(s) of key note speaker(s).
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM Job Fair and Exhibits
Sunday, September 12, 2010
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM
MAC Workshop B – Health Services Research and Health Disparities
(continuation from Saturday & free of charge for students – registration required)
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Workshop 1
Introduction to Bayesian Analysis
Sander Greenland, PhD
Department of Epidemiology
University of California, Los Angeles
Part I:
Bayesian methods continue to grow more popular in advanced statistical modeling, but have as
yet had little impact on basic teaching and analysis. This lag may be due to the common
misconception that Bayesian methods are computationally difficult and require special software.
Nonetheless, perfectly adequate Bayesian analyses can be carried out with ordinary software for
standard (frequentist) analysis, with no special programming required. Under a wide range of
priors, the accuracy of these approximations is just as good as the frequentist accuracy of the
software, and more than adequate for observational studies in health and social sciences. An easy
way to do Bayesian analyses is via inverse-variance (information) weighted averaging of the
prior with the frequentist estimate. A more general method expresses the prior distributions in
the form of prior data or “data equivalents,” which are then entered in the analysis as a new data
stratum. That form reveals the strength of the prior judgments being introduced, and leads to
methods for modeling biases, which will be discussed in Part II.
Part II:
This session describes extensions of the basic Bayesian methods in part I to analyses involving
non-normal priors and regression analysis, including hierarchical (multilevel) modeling. These
methods provide an alternative to the parsimony-oriented approaches of standard regression
analysis. In particular, they replace arbitrary variable-selection criteria by prior distributions; by
doing so they facilitate realistic use of vague but important prior information. They also allow
Bayesian analyses to be conducted with standard regression packages, without any special
programming; one need only be able to add variables and records to the data set. The methods
thus facilitate the use of Bayesian solutions to problems of sparse data, multiple comparisons,
and study bias.
1:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Workshop 2
Epidemiologic Methods for Comparative Effectiveness Research
M. Alan Brookhart, PhD
Til Sturmer, MD, ScD
Department of Epidemiology
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Epidemiologic studies are increasingly used to investigate the comparative safety and effectiveness of medical products. This workshop reviews issues related to study design and confounder control in non-experimental studies of medical interventions. We begin the workshop by discussing important sources of confounding bias in observational studies: including confounding by indication and the healthy user effect. We then discuss how the comparative new user study design can mitigate many of these sources of confounding bias. However, even after careful choice of comparator group, there still may exist baseline difference between treatment groups in a comparative new user study. We then discuss the use of propensity scores (PS) as a tool to balance residual differences between groups to control for measured confounders. We describe various approaches to using the PS, including matching, sub-classification, and inverse-probability weighting. One of the central issues with implementation of PS methods is selecting which covariates to include in the PS model. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to this problem, including automated high-dimensional approaches versus theoretically-based a priori approaches. We briefly review some approaches that can be used to in the presence of unmeasured confounders, including sensitivity analyses, external adjustment, PS calibration, and instrumental variable methods. Finally, we consider statistical and epidemiologic approaches to handling events that occur during follow-up, such as treatment discontinuation and therapy changes.
8:00 AM-12:00 PM
Workshop 3
Pharmacoepidemiology for Epidemiologists
Alec Walker, MD, DrPH
World Health Information Science Consultants
1:00 PM-5:00 PM
Workshop 4
Introduction to Multi-Level Modeling
Charles E. McCulloch, PhD
Professor and Head,
Division of Biostatistics
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
University of California, San Francisco
Multilevel modeling techniques, including hierarchical data, repeated measures, and longitudinal data analyses are commonly used in epidemiological research to accommodate clustered and correlated data structures. This workshop will introduce the main methods of analysis (mixed effects regression models and generalized estimating equations) for a variety of outcome types. The focus will be on application and proper interpretation of the methods, which will be illustrated with a number of examples. Statistical computing using Stata will be interwoven throughout. Specific topics include: rationale for and research questions addressed by multilevel modeling, correlation structures, fixed and random factors, mixed model regression, generalized linear models, generalized estimating equations, and model diagnostics.
1:00 PM-5:00 PM)
Workshop 5
Career Mentoring: Epidemiologists and their Flexible Careers - Senior Epidemiologists Reflect on Careers that have Spanned Multiple Settings [free of charge to ACE associate members and SER student caucus members]
Robert Hiatt, MD, PhD, U. of California, San Francisco
John Acquavella, PhD, Amgen, Inc.
Pauline Mendola, PhD, Centers for Disease Control
Sandra I. Sulsky, MPH, PhD,ENVIRON
Presentations
1:00 PM-5:00 PM
Workshop 6
Successful Grant Writing
Scott Osbourne, PhD, MPH
Center for Scientific Review, National Institutes of Health, DHHS
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