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DEPARTMENT OF EPIDEMIOLOGY & BIOSTATISTICS

Academics

Dr. Pollock serves as a Co-director of the K30, Master of Science in Clinical Investigation training program. Faculty of the DEB are largely responsible for organizing and teaching the following core courses for the Program, these are summarized below:

  1. Patient Oriented Clinical Research Methods — this three semester sequence is integrated with the three semester Biostatistics series:
    1. Semester 1 (MEDI 5071) — Covered topics include Defining a Research Question, Cross-sectional Studies, and Case-Control Studies. [Baillargeon, Ma, Michalek, Pollock]
    2. Semester 2 (MEDI 6060) — Covered topics include Observational Prospective Studies, Non-Randomized Intervention Studies, Randomized Controlled Trials, and Information Synthesis. . [Baillargeon, Ma, Michalek, Pollock]
    3. Semester 3 (MEDI 6062 — conducted in combination with MEDI 6063) — Covered topics include Instrument Development, Cross Cultural Adaptation of Research Instruments, Genetic Epidemiology, Pharmacoepidemiology, Pharmacogenomics, and Secondary Data Analysis [Baillargeon, Pollock]
  2. Patient Oriented Clinical Research Biostatistics — this three semester sequence is integrated with the Patient Oriented Clinical Research Methods series:
    1. Semester 1 (MEDI 5072) — Covered topics include Probability Distributions, Sample Size Calculations, Hypothesis Testing, Odds Ratios and Logistic Regression. [Cornell, Baillargeon, Ma, Wang, Michalek]
    2. Semester 2 (MEDI 6061) — Covered topics include Analysis of Variance, Survival Analysis, Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials, and Methods of Meta-Analysis. [Cornell, Ma Baillargeon, Pollock, Chisholm, Wang, Michalek]
    3. Semester 3 (MEDI 6063 — conducted in combination with MEDI 6062) — Covered topics include Handling Missing Data, Analysis of Genetic Epidemiologic Studies, Structural Equation Modeling, Economic Analyses. [Cornell, Hunt, Owen, Palmer]
  3. Grantsmanship and Peer Review (MEDI 6064) — Topics covered include extramural funding agencies, the NIH peer review process, NIH awards and study sections, interpreting and responding to written critiques [Pollock]
  4. Introduction to Clinical Investigation — this two-week short course is targeted at first year fellows and provides a comprehensive outline of the basic principles and research designs used in clinical research. Other topics include seminars on biostatistics, research ethics, and scientific integrity. [Baillargeon, Pollock, Michalek, Sanns]

DEB faculty also teach in the Medical School Epidemiology course (MEDI 4155). This clinical epidemiology course is taught to 4th year medical students and covers the basic principles of epidemiology and application to clinical problems [Hunt]

Other educational activities include serving on dissertation committees. The DEB faculty also serve as mentors for the K30 clinical research fellows. K30 trainees are primarily clinical fellows and junior faculty. K30 trainees are required to complete a multi-semester research project. Those enrolled in the MSCI degree conduct mentored research with members of the DEB. The DEB provides regular consultations with trainees to support their education.

The University of Texas Board of Regents recently approved a new joint Ph.D. Degree Program in Biostatistics. This program will be offered jointly by the statistics faculty of the Department of Management Science and Statistics at the UTSA, the DEB faculty at UT Health Science Center, and by a faculty person from the San Antonio Regional Campus of the UT School of Public Health. We will be site visited on Nov. 11, 2005 by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for final approval. The Ph.D. will be in Applied Statistics with concentrations in Biostatistics/Bioinformatics or Demography. The primary aim of the proposed doctoral program is to produce students with advanced training in biostatistics, bioinformatics-focused statistics and demography, with an emphasis on biomedical applications and health services research and policy. This proposed program combines aspects of statistical methodology and demography with biostatistics, bioinformatics/computational biology, health, and policy. This program will draw on the local strengths of these fields to address applied questions impacting populations in San Antonio, the South Texas Region, Texas, and the nation. DEB faculty will develop courses in Clinical Trials Methodology, Advanced Epidemiologic Methods, and Bioinformatics, as well as provide supervised training and work experience for advanced-level graduate students in the application of statistical theory and methods to clinical and epidemiological research. It is envisioned that this will provide a venue for our MSCI graduates to obtain a Ph.D. in methods applicable to the conduct of clinical- and population-based research. Furthermore, it will begin to address the shortfall in availability of doctoral-trained biostatisticians in our geographic region.

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