Description: This course introduces students to modern causal inference concepts applied to epidemiology, primarily based on the potential outcomes paradigm
Learning Objectives: This course will help students:
1) Recognize the evolution of causal thinking in epidemiology.
2) Become familiar with concepts involving individual vs. average causal effects, counterfactuals, and causal contrasts.
3) Learn the assumptions required to identify causal effects.
4) Formulate causal questions using causal diagrams.
5) Understand sources and effects of bias including confounding, selection, misclassification within a potential outcomes frame.
6) Appreciate the principles underlying approaches to management of bias at the level of data analysis through G methods, including inverse probability weighting.
In addition, the course addresses a CEPH-required foundational learning objective:
• Explain the role of quantitative and qualitative methods and sciences in describing and assessing a population’s health.
Undergraduates are allowed to enroll in this course.
Description: This course provides an overview of pregnancy and perinatal outcomes from an epidemiological perspective, including their burden, risk factors and consequences, and methodological challenges for their study at the population level.
Learning Objectives: This course will help students:
1) Identify key physiological aspects of intrauterine development, birth, and the neonatal period.
2) Understand the role of common risk factors (e.g. parental age, socioeconomic status, smoking, obesity) for adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes.
3) Become familiar with the definition, burden, causes, and consequences of common adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes including diabetic and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, miscarriage, fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, stillbirth and infant mortality, birth defects, and maternal mortality.
4) Recognize the methodological approaches and challenges specific to the study of pregnancy and perinatal outcomes at the population level.
Prerequisites: EPID 701 or EPID 503 or EPID 600 or EPID 601 AND EPID 709 or BIOSTAT 501 or BIOSTAT 521
Description: This course focuses on the design, analysis, and interpretation of epidemiologic studies addressing diet and health. The course will provide quantitative practical skills to deal with methodological issues around dietary assessment methods, sources of variation in the diet, energy intake, measurement error, anthropometry and body composition, and biomarkers of intake.
