Courses

Instructor TBA

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 6 to May 31- no classes Monday, May 20 (Victoria Day)
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
9h00 to 12h30

Academic credits: 3

Instructor TBA

Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and individual patient data 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, and, to undertake reviews themselves. 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 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, as well as individual patient data meta-analyses. 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. Several software packages will be discussed, along with tutorials on how to effectively use tools such as PubMed and EndNote for conducting systematic reviews.

Restriction: Registration is open to students in the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Public Health programs, as well as Medical Residents. All other student must obtain permission from the instructor in order to register.

Prerequisites: Introductory level training in epidemiology and biostatistics.

May 21 to May 31
Monday to Friday
13h00 to 16h00

Academic credits: 2

laurent.azoulay [at] mcgill.ca (L. Azoulay) / kristian.filion [at] mcgill.ca (K. Filion)

The objective of this course is to build on the principles covered in Introduction to Pharmacoepidemiology and provide students with a more advanced understanding of the design and analysis of pharmacoepidemiological studies. This course addresses both methodological and practical issues in pharmacoepidemiology through didactic lectures, group discussions, and the examination of examples from the medical literature. Topics covered include themes related to the exposure time windows, the use of active drug comparators, latency and the application of lag periods, reverse causality, detection bias, methodological considerations in the assessment of acute versus insidious outcomes, new-user designs, healthy-user effects, and non-traditional study designs. In addition, the role of confounding and methods used to minimize its effects, such as propensity scores, are discussed in detail. Other special topics include meta-analyses of pharmacoepidemiologic studies.

Prerequisites: EPIB 633 or Permission of instructor

May 21 to May 31
Live on-line sessions
Monday to Friday
10h30 to 12h00 (EDT)

Academic Credits: 2

christel.renoux [at] mcgill.ca (C. Renoux)

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. Participants will have an opportunity to design and critique a study that addresses a current therapeutic controversy.

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor

May 6 to May 17
Live on-line sessions
Monday to Friday
10h00 to 12h00 (EDT)

Academic Credits: 2

Dick.Menzies [at] mcgill.ca (D. Menzies)

This course provides an introduction to design, execution, analysis and reporting of Randomized Clinical Trials (RCT) with a focus on clinical aspects. The target audience are clinicians (ie health care providers) with an interest in RCTs. In the first week we will cover all the ‘basics’ from background and rationale, defining objectives, designs, study populations, randomization techniques, interventions, placebos and blinding, outcomes, data gathering, sample size considerations, data analysis and reporting. In the 2nd week we will cover specific topics: including special populations such as pregnant women and children, newer designs such as adaptive designs and pragmatic trials, Good Clinical Practice (GCP), ethics and regulatory issues, economic aspects and pharmacokinetics, patient reported outcomes, community engagement.

May 6 to May 17
Monday to Friday
13h00 to 16h30

Academic Credits: 2

Instructor TBA

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, Otolaryngology, Medical Residents, and Clinical Fellows, or permission of the instructor.

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, Public Health or Biostatistics programs.

June 3 to June 28 - no classes Monday June 24 (St-Jean-Baptiste)
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
09h00 to 12h30

Academic Credits: 3

robert.platt [at] mcgill.ca (R. Platt)

This course covers modern methods to control confounding, one of the primary sources of bias in pharmacoepidemiology. Recent years have seen several important developments in methods for confounding control. Most of these methods are based on the propensity score. This course will review the foundations of the propensity score, the high-dimensional propensity score and inverse probability weighting, and the disease risk score. Machine learning methods will be discussed. Worked examples using SAS and R will be discussed.

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor

June 10 to June 13
Live on-line sessions
Monday to Thursday
10h00 to 12h00 (EDT)

Academic Credit: 1

jaime.caro [at] mcgill.ca (J. Caro)

As prices for pharmaceuticals climb ever higher, the formal assessment of what is a reasonable price to pay for a given benefit has gained increasing attention. This course provides a detailed introduction to the key concepts of this field, including those providing the foundation for economic evaluation in Quebec, in Canada, and in various European countries. After defining the basic economic problem, study types (cost-benefit, cost-utility, cost-effectiveness) and corresponding decision rules are examined. An example is constructed in detail to demonstrate how models are developed and a new approach to simulation, known as DICE and developed by the instructor, will be presented. Students are shown how costs and effectiveness are estimated – and how to analyze the model, 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 10 to June 13
Monday to Thursday
09h00 to 17h00

Academic Credits: 2

samy.suissa [at] mcgill.ca (S. Suissa)

This course is designed to develop skills necessary in the critical appraisal of pharmacoepidemiological studies with a particular focus on advanced methodological issues, study design, analysis and interpretation of results. The course will cover cohort, case-control, nested case-control and within-subject designs, along with various sources of information and selection bias, focusing more specifically on time-risk functions and time-related biases. These issues will be addressed through a review of several published pharmacoepidemiological studies, focusing particularly on studies using computerized health databases.

Prerequisites: EPIB 633, EPIB 631 or Permission of the instructor

June 3 to June 6
Monday to Thursday
9h00 to 17h00

Academic Credits: 2