Journal of Statistics and Data Science Education (Sep 2024)

Building Capacity for COVID-19 Surveillance: A Statistics Course for Health Officials in Seven Low- and Middle-Income Countries

  • Isabel R. Fulcher,
  • Donald Fejfar,
  • Nichole Kulikowski,
  • Jean-Claude Mugunga,
  • Michael Law,
  • Bethany Hedt-Gauthier

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/26939169.2024.2315936
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 32, no. 3
pp. 315 – 323

Abstract

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of health program implementors and research analysts across seven low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) alongside Boston-based collaborators convened to implement data-driven approaches for public health response. An intensive statistics and data science training short course was developed to ensure that in-country researchers could implement the necessary statistical methods for COVID-19 surveillance. The main goal of the course was to enable interpretation of findings from time series analyses and flag potential data issues. This manuscript summarizes our experience teaching this course, including a detailed course overview, participant feedback, and thoughts on how targeted, online courses can be used to support statistical capacity building in LMICs.

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