Courses Taught by Peter Larson

EPID592: Introduction to Spatial Epidemiology and GIS for Public Health

  • Graduate level
  • Online MPH only
  • This is a second year course for Online students
  • Fall term(s) for online MPH students;
  • 4 credit hour(s) for online MPH students;
  • Instructor(s): Peter Larson, Jonathan Zelner, (Online MPH);
  • Offered Every Fall
  • Prerequisites: None
  • Advisory Prerequisites: None
  • Description: In this class, students will be exposed to the conceptual foundations of spatial analysis in public health and will develop familiarity with spatial data manipulation and visualization using GIS software.’
  • Learning Objectives: 1. Develop familiarity with the historical and conceptual foundations of modern spatial epidemiology. 2. Learn about the different types of spatial data used in epidemiology and public health. 3. Obtain, load, and visualize spatial datasets using ArcGIS Online.
ZelnerJonathan
Jonathan Zelner
Concentration Competencies that EPID592 Allows Assessment On
Department Program Degree Competency Specific course(s) that allow assessment
Population and Health Sciences MPH Compare population health indicators across subpopulations, time, and data sources PUBHLTH515, BIOSTAT592, EPID590, EPID592, EPID643, BIOSTAT595, BIOSTAT501

EPID594: Key Concepts in Spatial Analysis

  • Graduate level
  • Online MPH only
  • This is a second year course for Online students
  • Winter term(s) for online MPH students;
  • 2 credit hour(s) for online MPH students;
  • Instructor(s): Peter Larson, Jonathan Zelner, (Online MPH);
  • Prerequisites: EPID592
  • Description: In this course, students will gain familiarity with the key issues and statistical and theoretical tools for asking and answering epidemiological questions using spatial data.
  • Learning Objectives: 1. Identify challenges to causal inference using spatial data. 2. Evaluate and employ appropriate analytic methods for diverse public health questions. 3. Fit basic regression models to spatial data and evaluate model fit.
ZelnerJonathan
Jonathan Zelner

EPID595: Applied Spatial Modeling

  • Graduate level
  • Online MPH only
  • This is a second year course for Online students
  • Winter term(s) for online MPH students;
  • 3 credit hour(s) for online MPH students;
  • Instructor(s):
  • Prerequisites: EPID 592 and EPID 594
  • Description: The large availability of geographically indexed health data, along with advances in computing, have enabled the development of statistical methods for the analysis of spatial epidemiological data. This course will introduce students to the most commonly used statistical models used to understand spatial variation in disease risk.
  • Learning Objectives: By the end of the course students will be able to: (i) Recognize different types of spatial data. (ii) Formulate research questions and determine the appropriate spatial statistical model to analyze the data. (iii) Understand the concept of spatial correlation and how to estimate it in point-level spatial data. (iv) Include spatial random effect in generalized linear models for the analysis of spatial data. (v) Interpret the results of a spatial generalized linear model. (vi) Perform spatial interpolation of point-referenced data over space to predict missing data at unsampled locations. (vii) Smooth disease rates and disease counts over space using multilevel hierarchical models. (viii) Understand the definition of a (disease) cluster. (ix) Obtain a kernel density estimate of the intensity function representing the likelihood of observing a disease case at a given location. (x) Identify clusters of disease cases via appropriate statistical methods. (xi) Formulate statistical models to characterize spatial variation in the distribution of disease cases.