PHDA testimonials

"Although I have experience in the area of Population Health, I had no formal training working with layered data sets. The Working with Administrative Data course was good as it included making a data dictionary and use of admin data. One of my ongoing projects at work involves assessing trends in surgery wait times for lung cancer patients. This work involved analysis of local data as a pilot project looking for trends in regional variations; I used techniques learned in PHDA 01 to facilitate this analysis. I am happy that I took PHDA 01 before PHDA 02 as I didn’t have strong SAS skills and PHDA 01 includes an introduction to SAS skills from the very beginning."

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"The program has given me valuable skills and practice in a variety of statistical software. The PHDA program team including professors, IT and admin staff were all very helpful and a very supportive part of my program experience. I also enjoyed studying with fellow colleagues who had a broad range of work and research skills. The calibre of student in all my PHDA courses was very impressive and many were very willing to share their knowledge and analytic expertise. For this reason I really benefited from the partner and group work in many of the courses. Although the online format of the courses came with some weakness (as you don’t get to connect with people in person), I really appreciated how the asynchronous delivery provided flexibility to work and take courses at the same time."

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"The PHDA 06 evaluation course was the most useful to me as it is something I'd like to incorporate into my future research much more."

"I was browsing for some relevant programs that would complement my current job as an epidemiologist. The PHDA 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. The coursework was comprehensive but not too time consuming. The GIS courses were fantastic and provided great information. 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."

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"I think the highly trained, expert instructors, who are approachable and provide excellent feedback are a major strength. Certainly, the small class sizes allow for that individualized feedback and a continual dialogue with instructors in the discussion boards as well. I think the Moodle course site is very easy to use, and in general, the courses were very well organized.

Through the program, I came to learn about the enormous benefits of using already-collected administrative health data, and the process for doing so. I think my skills with SAS and ArcGIS will be the most useful to me, but the larger concepts of data integrity, (PHDA 01), what type of analysis is used in certain situations (PHDA 02), and considerations when doing spatial analysis (PHDA 04) are immensely important as well."

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