Linked CANUE and administrative health databases: PopDataBC, MCHP and NB_IRDT | March 27th | 2020
Linked CANUE and administrative health databases: PopDataBC and MCHP
March 27th (9 am pacific | 12 noon eastern)
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Linkage of CANUE exposure data with provincially managed administrative health databases offers new and exciting opportunities for environmental health research. To date, CANUE data has been linked to data held by Population Data BC (PopData), Manitoba Centre for Health Policy (MCHP), and the New Brunswick Institute for Research, Data and Training (NB-IRDT).
Speakers:
Kelly Sanderson is the Lead of Business and Initiatives Development at Population Data BC. She works closely with BC government and BC SUPPORT Unit partners on joint data initiatives funded by the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR). She joined the organization in 2009 and was previously the Data Access Unit Lead where she enjoyed working with and guiding many researchers through the Data Access Request process. Her educational background and related professional experience was in Urban Planning and Geographical Information systems so she readily appreciates the value CANUE data brings as a new PopData holding.
Charles Burchill has been an Associate Director at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, University of Manitoba, since 2006. Prior to this role, he worked as a research analyst at MCHP starting in 1992. He is actively involved with Health and Social policy-related research using Manitoba administrative health and social data. The repository of data represents over 80 distinct programs and databases with linkable data in the areas of health, family services, justice, and education. His graduate work was in field ecology, with the CANUE data providing an opportunity to bring his interests full circle. The CANUE data represents an important source of built environment and environmental data that can be linked through small area geographies to the overall repository.
Dr. Ted McDonald is a Professor of Economics at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Academic Director of the NB Research Data Centre, Director of the NB Institute for Research, Data and Training and the New Brunswick lead for the Maritime SPOR SUPPORT Unit. He holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Commerce in Economics from the University of Melbourne. Dr. McDonald’s main areas of research include health status and labour market issues of immigrants, rural residents, minority groups and other subpopulations, as well as an ongoing program of research on the socioeconomic and demographic determinants of cancer.
Dany Doiron is a research associate in the Respiratory Epidemiology and Clinical Research Unit at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and is CANUE’s data linkage lead. Dany holds a Masters degree in Public Policy (Simon Fraser University) and PhD in Epidemiology (University of Basel). His research explores the effects of environmental exposures on health.
Environmental health research opportunities through CPTP and CANUE | February 13th | 2020
About the Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey Brook
Dr. Jeffrey Brook is CANUE’s Principal Investigator and Scientific Director. He is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. He has 25 years of experience as an Environment Canada scientist working at the science-policy interface. He is one of Canada’s leading experts in air quality, recognized at all levels of government and academically, including for his substantial contributions in air pollution health research. Dr. Brook has led scientific assessments to inform policy nationally and internationally, and advised multi-stakeholder groups shaping policy.
This webinar will provide an overview of the CANUE data and research opportunities made possible by linking CPTP’s individual lifestyle, genetic and behavioural data with CANUE’s environmental exposure metrics. This collaboration provides health researchers easy access to standardized urban environmental exposures, allowing them to tackle real-world problems related to exposures and the subsequent health outcomes. Ultimately, new knowledge enabled by the CANUE-CPTP partnership will help identify cost-effective actions that promote healthy childhood development and aging, reduce the burden of chronic disease, and minimize the impact of changing environments.
Webinar registration: http://bit.ly/CPTPwebinarFeb13
Making the Most of Residential History | February 4th | 2020
It’s a fact – people move! Join our panel of experts to hear more about how this impacts environmental health research, and how you can take advantage of residential history data now in Canada’s major cohorts.
Why do we care about residential history?
- Paul Villeneuve, Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, with appointments in the Department of Health Sciences and in the Departments of Health Sciences and Neurosciences at Carleton University
Statistics Canada residential history program.
- Michael Tjepkema, Principal Researcher, Statistics Canada, Division of Health Analysis
CANUE data and cohorts with residential history.
- Dany Doiron, Research Associate, Respiratory Epidemiology and Clinical Research Unit, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC); CANUE data linkage expert.
Case Study – Examples from the Canadian Census Health and Environment Cohort.
- Dan Crouse, Consulting Senior Scientist, Health Effects Institute, Boston, MA.
Case Study – Examples from the BC Generations CPTP cohort.
- Trevor Dummer, Co-National Scientific Director of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project (CPTP).
CIHR Data Analysis Grants | June 26th | 2019
The Canadian Institutes for Health Research has announced a new Operating Grant Competition for data analysis using existing databases and cohorts. The intent of this funding opportunity is to highlight and encourage the use of previously funded cohort, administrative, and survey data. There will be three funding streams; one stream in cancer prevention and control, another in reproductive, maternal, child, and youth health, as well as a stream in healthy cities intervention research.
CANUE hosted a webinar on June 26th (9 am pacific | 12 noon eastern) for researchers who would like more detailed information on our data holdings, partnerships with health data holders, and an opportunity to ask questions directly to the CANUE team.
DATA SCIENCE TRAINING
New to data science or looking to pick up a few new skills? Don’t miss these free webinars, guided practical tutorials and online resources featuring CANUE data.
Developed in partnership with Population Data BC
Module 1: Introduction to Machine Learning
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Module 2: Regression and Regularization Algorithms
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Module 3: Advanced Supervised Learning
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Module 4: Advanced Unsupervised Learning
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Dr. Aman Verma is a Data Engineer with a PhD in Epidemiology from McGill University, and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science. He has experience in developing machine learning systems with large databases, particularly for scientific data in healthcare. While he’s comfortable learning any programming language, he’s recently become particularly interested in R. Aman is currently involved in a number of projects, including measuring how following opioid prescription guidelines can decrease the risk of opioid overdose, modelling trajectories of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and assessing how to best prioritize ambulance calls using secondary healthcare data.
AN INTRODUCTION TO DATA MANAGEMENT AND CLEANING FOR ANLAYSIS IN ‘R’
This self paced free online course will provide you with an introduction to Data Management and Cleaning for Analysis using R Software. Each of the four modules includes a Power Point slide deck, CANUE training data, R code and associated exercises for practice.
To access this resource please create a Population Data BC account here: https://my.popdata.bc.ca/accounts/register/
Once your account has been approved you will be able to access the Education and Training site and self enroll in this and other free online courses.
Topics covered include:
- Introduction and theory of data cleaning and management
- Getting started with R software
- Subsetting variables and data cleaning
- Creating variables, subset observations and data cleaning
- Merging, joining and reshaping data
Megan Striha currently works as a Data Analyst. She has a Masters of Public Health degree and three years of experience in health data analysis, including working with survey, administrative and census data.
Developing Apps for Population Health Research | APRIL 17 | 2019
9am – 10am pacific | 12 noon – 1pm eastern | 1:30pm – 2:30pm NFLD
Advances in technology, including mobile apps, have provided researchers with new ways to collect data. Health researchers are increasingly interested in developing and using mobile apps for research data collection. However, many challenges exist for health researchers when developing mobile apps. The purpose of this webinar is provide an overview of results of a report interviewing 8 researchers who have developed mobile apps. We will also provide recommendations for researchers who are planning to develop a health research apps.
Melissa Tobin is a Master of Science in Kinesiology student at Memorial University and an INTERACT Trainee. She is a graduate of the Bachelor of Kinesiology Honours (Co-op) Degree from Memorial University. Melissa’s master’s research will focus on how exposure to active transportation infrastructure influences physical activity levels. Melissa is very passionate about increasing physical activity levels for all members of our community.
Daniel Fuller is Canada Research Chair in Population Physical Activity in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University. His research is focused on using wearable technologies to study physical activity, transportation interventions, and equity in urban spaces. He focuses his methodological work on methods for natural experiments, and machine learning.
Interactive Mapping of Environmental Health Assessments | MARCH 19 | 2019
9am-10am pacific | 12 noon – 1pm eastern
Non communicable diseases including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among populations in high income countries. The rapid increase of overweight and obesity among Canadians and its associated consequences, including hypertension and diabetes is a major public health problem, and threaten to halt the declines in cardiovascular disease deaths Canada has experienced in the past 30 years.
Knowledge gaps exist regarding the impact of the built environment in relation to individual risk factor development, and the variation of these built environments across Canada by region and rurality. In order to address these gaps in our knowledge, we convened the Canadian Alliance of Healthy Hearts and Minds – a prospective cohort of men and women recruited from existing cohorts in Canada and through recruitment of a new First Nations cohort study.
As part of the knowledge translation plan of the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds project, we developed and released an on-line, interactive map of 2,074 communities across Canada that conveys the information from our community contextual health audits. In this presentation, I will describe the development of the map, and describe how to access and use the tools embedded in the map.
Russell de Souza is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. He is a registered dietitian, and his research focuses on dietary patterns, health, and how the food environment shapes food choice and risk of cardiovascular disease.