SUMMER SESSION DATES
May Session:
May 6 to May 31, 2013 (no classes on Monday, May 20 - Victoria Day)
timetable_may_2013.pdf
June Session:
June 3 to June 28, 2013 (no classes on Monday, June 24 - St-Jean-Baptiste)
timetable_june_2013.pdf
COURSES OFFERED
May: EPIB-600 EPIB-619 EPIB-631 EPIB-633 EPIB-642 EPIB-643 EPIB-661 EPIB-671 EPIB-672
June: EPIB-507 EPIB-600 EPIB-654 EPIB-660 EPIB-668 EPIB-701
COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
EPIB 507 Biostatistics for Health Professionals - Course is full
elham [dot] rahme [at] mcgill [dot] ca (E. Rahme)
Basic principles of statistical inference applicable to clinical, epidemiologic, and other health research. Topics include: methods of describing data, statistical inference for means, statistical inference for proportions, non-parametric statistics, correlation and introduction to linear regression.
Restriction: Restricted to students registered in Occupational Health, Dentistry, Rehabilitation Sciences, Human Nutrition, Experimental Medicine-Family Medicine Option, Medical Residents, and Clinical Fellows.
Prerequisite: Permission of instructor for students not listed in the restrictions above.
NOTES: Medical Residents and Clinical Fellows can register for this course only during the Summer term.
Course not opened to students registered in the Epidemiology and Biostatistics programs.
June 3 to 28
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
13h00 to 16h30
Education Bldg., Rm 624
Academic Credits: 3
EPIB 600 Clinical Epidemiology
The general objective of this 3-credit course is to provide students with a basic understanding of the methods of epidemiology, as applied to clinical research. Issues to be addressed include measurement issues, study design, analysis, and inference in the clinical research setting. Students will have the opportunity to apply these concepts to their own areas of interest.
All students should have a strong clinical background in medicine or an allied health profession. Preference will be given to residents and fellows enrolled in postgraduate medical training programs at McGill University. Previous course work in epidemiology or research experience is not required.
May Session - Course is full
kaberi [dot] dasgupta [at] mcgill [dot] ca (K. Dasgupta) / nitika [dot] pai [at] mcgill [dot] ca (N. Pai)
May 6 to 31
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
09h30 to 12h00
Education Bldg., Rm 627
June Session
sasha [dot] bernatsky [at] mcgill [dot] ca (S. Bernatsky) / maida [dot] sewitch [at] mcgill [dot] ca (M. Sewitch)
June 3 to 28
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
09h00 to 12h30
Education Bldg., Rm 627
Academic credits: 3
EPIB-619: Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses - Course is full
madhukar [dot] pai [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. M. Pai) / kristian [dot] filion [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. K. Filion)
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are critical for evidence-based clinical and public health practice. The widespread and growing application of systematic reviews to synthesize evidence on key research and clinical questions makes it useful for most health professionals to be able to understand and critique this research design. This course will provide a detailed description of the systematic review process, discuss the strengths and limitations of the method, and provide step-by-step guidance on how to actually perform a systematic review. Specific topics to be covered (and emphasized through numerous examples from the medical literature) include: formulation of the review question, searching of literature, quality assessment of studies, data extraction, meta-analytic methods, and report writing. The course will also cover statistical issues such as selection of a proper statistical model for meta-analysis, including problem sets with practical examples of fixed and random effects models as well as examples of methods to evaluate heterogeneity and publication bias; graphical and tabular templates for the presentation of data from a meta-analysis. Several software packages (e.g. STATA) will be discussed, along with tutorials on how to effectively use tools such as PubMed and EndNote for conducting systematic reviews. This course will feature Dr Robert Platt as guest faculty who will discuss specific biostatistical issues relevant to meta-analysis.
Instructor's permission required for students NOT registered in the Epidemiology program.
Prerequisites: Introductory level training in epidemiology and biostatistics.
May 21 to 31
Monday to Friday
13h00 to 16h00
Leacock Building, Rm 212
Academic credits: 2
EPIB-631 PE II: Intermediate Pharmacoepidemiology
james [dot] brophy [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. J. Brophy)
This course will build on the basic principles of pharmacoepidemiology from the introductory course and introduce more advanced theoretical concepts. The course will address both methodological and practical issues in pharmacoepidemiology by examining current publications and controversies in pharmacoepidemiology. General topics will include: an appreciation of the different perspectives and data sources used in pharmacoepidemiology as well as the role of pharmacoepidemiology in drug approval and particularly in post marketing review of drug safety. Methodological issues will consider selection bias, information bias, confounding and interpretation bias. Recent techniques to address some of these issues including instrumental variables, propensity scores and the role of meta-analysis for the sometimes diverse pharmacoepidemiology observational studies will be discussed. The strengths and weakness of the various study designs will be emphasized. Special topics will also include the ethical and legal implications of pharmacoepidemiology. The focus of the course and the choice of studies should be on interest to both consumers and producers of the pharmacoepidemiology literature including clinicians, regulators, public health professionals and industry.
Prerequisites: EPIB-633 or permission of instructor
May 13 to 16
Monday to Thursday
09h00 to 17h00
Purvis Hall, Rm 25
Academic Credits: 2
EPIB-633 PE I: Introduction to Pharmacoepidemiology
linda [dot] levesque [at] queensu [dot] ca (Dr. L. Lévesque)
This course is designed to introduce concepts and principles of pharmacoepidemiology in the context of drug evaluation and therapeutic decision-making. Topics to be covered include history of pharmacoepidemiology, choice of study design, sources of bias and their prevention and control, the importance of prescribing and drug taking behaviours, sources and use of exposure and outcome data, assessing causality, and measures of association. Examples will be drawn from published pharmacoepidemiologic studies. Special topics will include principles of clinical pharmacology relevant to pharmacoepidemiology and approaches to pharmacovigilance. Participants will have an opportunity to design and critique a study that addresses a current therapeutic controversy.
May 6 to 10
Monday to Friday
09h00 to 17h00
Purvis Hall, Rm 25
Academic Credits: 2
EPIB-642 Introduction to Health Technology Assessment
james [dot] brophy [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. J. Brophy) / nandini [dot] dendukuri [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. N. Dendukuri)
Modern technologies have been responsible for great advances in health-care delivery over the last century. However, increased reliance on these technologies has been an important contributor to rising health-care costs. This has led to an interest in evidence-based decision-making to support the induction of technologies into routine practice and evaluation of existing technologies. Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is a multi-disciplinary field that uses methods from Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Health Economics to summarize evidence from research studies in a form useful to policy makers.
This short course will introduce students to some of the basic concepts in health technology assessment - the need for HTA, producers of HTA, components of a HTA (systematic reviews, meta-analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis) and the impact of HTA.
Prerequisites: Exposure to introductory level courses in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, preferably EPIB-601 and EPIB-607 or their equivalent.
May 6 to 9
Monday to Thursday
09h00 to 12h15
Purvis Hall, Rm 24
Academic Credit: 1
EPIB-643 Clinical Trials
tkoutsavlis [at] shire [dot] com (Dr. T. Koutsavlis)
This course is designed to provide an overview of issues and approaches to the design and analysis of randomized clinical trials. Topics to be considered include specification of a primary question, adherence to ethical guidelines, reasons for and means of implementing randomization, consideration of design alternatives, sample size determination, subject recruitment, analytic strategies and trial reporting. The course provides an alternative to students who are unable to pursue a more in depth treatment of clinical trials provided in the 3 credit course offered during the regular academic year.
May 9 to 30
Thursday
13h00 to 16h15
Purvis Hall, Rm 48
Academic Credit: 1
EPIB-654 PE IV: Pharmacoeconomics
jaime [dot] caro [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. J. Caro)
The assessment of pharmaceuticals has expanded beyond efficacy and safety to cover their economic implications and other consequences. This course provides a detailed introduction to the key concepts of this field, including those providing the foundation for the new Economic Evalaution Guidelines of IQWiG in Germany. After defining the basic economic problem, study types (cost-benefit, cost-utility, cost-effectiveness) and corresponding decision rules are examined. An example is presented in detail to demonstrate how simulation models are developed and the advantages of using discrete event simulation instead of Markov models or decision trees. Students are shown approaches to populating the models – the determination of costs and parameterization of effectiveness – and how to analyze the model results, including how to deal with all levels of uncertainty. The course presents techniques for presentation of results to decision makers in the public and private health care systems, including the efficiency frontier approach.
June 3 to 6
Monday to Thursday
09h00 to 17h00
Purvis Hall, Rm 25
Academic Credits: 2
EPIB-660 Practical Aspects of Protocol Development - Cancelled
beth [dot] foster [at] muhc [dot] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. B. Foster)
This course is designed to give students working in pairs or groups the opportunity to develop, under guidance and criticism from instructors and fellow students, a protocol addressing a research question in their field of interest. Emphasis will be on the process of refining a research question and identifying the essential elements of a research protocol. Students will be briefed on how to prepare for a statistical consultation. Statistical and ethical consultations on all protocols will be provided in class. Course evaluation will be based on assignments, presentations and the completed protocol. Students may bring a protocol at any stage of development to class and those without a protocol may team up with those who have one. Selected protocols will form the course content.
Suggested background courses: EPIB-601 and EPIB-607 or equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
June 3 to 28
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
13h00 to 16h30
Purvis Hall, Rm 24
Minimum of 8 students required for course to be given.
Academic Credits: 3
EPIB-661 PE III: Advanced Pharmacoepidemiology
samy [dot] suissa [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. S. Suissa) / pierre [dot] ernst [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. P. Ernst)
This course is designed to develop skills necessary in the critical appraisal of pharmacoepidemiological studies with a particular focus on more recent methodological issues with advanced forms of design, analysis, interpretation of results, and limitations. Elements of the critical appraisal will be addressed through a review of several published pharmacoepidemiologic studies. The topics covered include ecological studies, exposure measures, confounding by indication, drug channeling, designs and analysis issues for cohort, case-control and nested case-control studies as well as the within-subject designs such as prescription sequence analysis, case-crossover and case-time-control studies, including situations with repeated event outcomes and time-risk functions. The course will also address methodological aspects of computerized databases used in pharmacoepidemiology.
Prerequisites: EPIB-631 or permission of the instructor
May 27 to 30
Monday to Thursday
09h00 to 17h00
Purvis Hall, Rm 24
Academic Credits: 2
EPIB-668 Reproductive Epidemiology: An Overview
olga [dot] basso [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. O. Basso)
The course will provide a general overview of the basic features in reproductive epidemiology, with a focus on some specific topics.
The objectives of the course are to:
- Provide an overview of reproductive epidemiology
- Introduce the basic concepts of this area of research
- Examine in some depth some specific topics (such as repeated pregnancy outcomes, fetal loss, neonatal mortality, birth weight and gestational age)
- Provide tools for critical reading of scientific articles in this area
June 3 to 14
Monday to Friday
09h15 to 11h45
Purvis Hall, Rm 24
Academic Credits: 2
EPIB-671 Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention
eduardo [dot] franco [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. E.L. Franco)
This course provides an overview of the key substantive and methodological concepts in cancer epidemiology and prevention. The contents include: a review of carcinogenic mechanisms and tumour biology; cancer burden worldwide and in North America; role of epidemiology in the assessment of carcinogenicity; causality; uses of epidemiologic methods to identify cancer causes and prognostic factors; overview of risk factors; and cancer prevention. This course is intended for epidemiology students, oncology residents, and health professionals who are contemplating a career in cancer epidemiology and prevention.
Prerequisite: EPIB-601 or equivalent or permission of the instructor.
May 13 to 31
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
13h30 to 17h00
Gerald Bronfman Centre, 546 Pine Ave West, Seminar Room
Academic Credit: 2
EPIB-672 Estimating the Causal Effects of Social Policy on Health
arijit [dot] nandi [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. A. Nandi) / sam [dot] harper [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. S. Harper) / jay [dot] kaufman [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. J. Kaufman) / erin [dot] strumpf [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. E. Strumpf)
This course will cover methods for estimating the effects of policies on health outcomes. We will define causal policy effects within the potential outcomes framework and contrast methods for describing the association between a policy and health outcome with methods for estimating causal policy effects. Students will learn to define policy-relevant research questions based on specific causal contrasts. We will review analytical strategies for estimating causal policy effects, including fixed effects regressions and synthetic control methods, as well as difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs.
Prerequisite: EPIB-603 and EPIB-607 or equivalent or permission of the instructor.
May 6 to 17
Monday to Friday
13h00 to 15h30
Purvis Hall, Rm 24
Academic Credit: 2
EPIB-701 Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam
claire [dot] infante-rivard [at] mcgill [dot] ca (Dr. C. Infante-Rivard)
The comprehensive examination is a written examination. The objective is to assess the degree to which doctoral students have been able to assimilate and apply the principles of epidemiologic research. Examination held yearly.
June 11, 2012
Tuesday
08h45 to 16h00
Location: LabMcMed 409, McIntyre Health Sciences Library
Academic Credits: 0