Maybe is was the low cost, the excitement of New York City, the renown faculty, the proximity to a densely populated area, or the strong reputation of the school that attracted them to the program.  Regardless of the reasons, the organizers of a new Epidemiology and Population Health Summer Institute at Columbia University (EPIC) are not arguing with their initial success in attracting ~130 student participants in the first year.

According to Sandro Galea, Chairman of the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia, the Institute was launched to appeal to non-matriculating students with little time or resources for study and to international students unable to spend an entire semester at the school. The EPIC Institute created brief, intense 1 week courses at relatively low cost. This formula worked to attract students with approximately two-thirds coming from the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut tri-state area and one third from overseas.

Future Plans

Encouraged by the turnout and the positive reviews, epidemiologists Ryan Demmer and Gina Lovasi, co-directors of the Institute, are redoubling their efforts for 2012 and plan to add another 15 courses next summer. This relatively large number of courses will catapult Columbia to the front ranks of institutions such as the University of Michigan and the Johns Hopkins University Schools of Public Health with much older programs that offer a similar number and  range of courses in epidemiology and related topics and skills.

Attendees

The attending students represented a wide variety of backgrounds ranging from undergraduate students wanting to get a flavor of epidemiology before deciding on a career path to senior clinical investigators wanting to learn new skills to better analyze data. According to the co-directors, the summer institute was an “academic mall” with courses on introductory topics in epidemiology, advanced analytic courses, offerings on theory, and “content” courses covering specific subjects such as cancer.

The average number of students per course was approximately 10 in the first year and organizers hope to raise that number to between 10-30 in the second year and to double the number of attendees while increasing the actual number of courses to 33.

Included will be new courses on social epidemiology, introductory biostatistics, clinical epidemiology, social media and public health, and ethics.

Courses

The courses fall largely into three categories, namely foundations of epidemiology and public health, skills for conducting or analyzing data, and subject matter domains such as diabetes. In 2012, each course will last for 20 hours over one week and take place in the morning or afternoon for four hours. Students will be able to take more than one course at a time in this fashion. “We think this format and structure are really effective,” said the organizers. Each course is priced the same at US $600 and is offered without academic credit.

Profits

A notable feature of the Columbia Institute, according to Dr Galea, is that the profits from the Institute flow into an EPIC fund established to help students. They can apply to the fund for materials or anything they need three times a year. Also, according to Galea, the Institute is only one of the new educational offerings the School is planning to make epidemiology training possible for a broader group of students with different needs. For example, Columbia is creating a new Executive Masters in Epidemiology for persons who can attend classes only on weekends. The School also expects to be providing degrees that can be earned online through distance learning.

Window on the Field

Asked what their slate of offerings in epidemiology revealed about the current state of the discipline, co-director Demmer told the Epidemiology Monitor that the Institute is eclectic and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the field with students coming from many different professional backgrounds. Secondly, the program reflects some of the tension in the field between those interested in studying specific interventions such as drugs and programs versus those interested in broader categories of risk factors such as those at a broader population level.

Courses in 2012

The courses being planned for June 4-29, 2012 are listed below and more information about the program is available from the website at http://cuepisummer.org

Readers interested in other summer programs can review the list of programs planned for 2012 in a related article in this issue on page 8. The list was taken from the special December issue of the Epidemiology Monitor entitled “The Year In Epidemiology” at www.epimonitor.net

EPIC 2012

Week 1: June 4-8

►  Advanced Epidemiology: Applications in Causal Thinking

►  Epidemiology of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

►  Program Evaluation

►  Introduction to Biostatistics

►  Epidemiological Analysis Using SAS

►  Lifecourse Epidemiology

►  Epidemiology of Diabetes and Obesity

►  Introduction to Observational Epidemiology

 

Week 2: June 11-15

►   Select Topics in Social Epidemiology

►   Epidemiologic Analysis Using R

►   Nutritional Epidemiology

►   Public Health Surveillance

►   Infectious Disease Epidemiology

►   Longitudinal Data Analysis

►   Geographic Information Systems

►   Assessing and Managing Risks

Week 3: June 18-22

►   The Ethics of Public Health

►   Cancer Epidemiology

►   Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

►   Introduction to Multi-Level Modeling

►   Introduction to Pharmacoepidemiology

►   Approaches to Race in Epidemiological Research

►   Analysis of Complex Survey Data

►   Clinical Epidemiology

►   Measuring Patient Reported Health Outcomes

Week 4: June 25-29

►   Structural Interventions

►   Genetic Epidemiology

►   Comparative Effectiveness Research Methods

►   Randomized Clinical Trials

►   Social Media in Population Health Communication

►   Logical Reasoning in Human Genetics

►   Place and Health

►   Epidemiologic Analysis Using Stata