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SHORT COURSE IN DATA SCIENCE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PUBLIC HEALTH

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Principal Investigator: Hoffman, Ava Marie
Institute Receiving Award Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Location Seattle, WA
Grant Number R25ES035590
Funding Organization National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
Award Funding Period 25 Aug 2023 to 31 Jul 2027
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Project Summary/Abstract Nearly all science fields have been drastically changed by the big data era, and datasets have the potential to create major breakthroughs in environmental health. However, professional development in data science lags behind for environmental health researchers and practitioners. What training does exist primarily benefits privileged institutions. We propose the Short Course in Data Science for Environmental Public Health to bridge this education gap. Through the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center Data Science Lab, we will leverage our combined 25-plus year track record of developing educational materials, scalable courses, scalable research experiences, and building communities around data science education to create this multi-modal course. The program, which will empower 30 learners annually, begins with a two-week online course that solidifies R programming foundations. These two weeks will use a combination of didactic lectures on best practices and active hands-on lab activities to practice and engrain programming skills, a model for which the lead instructors have earned recognition for excellence in teaching and successfully used to train over 100 professional learners. Participants will practice new skills one topic at a time to make the content more manageable. This foundation will prepare participants for participating in a three-day in-person intensive “Code-a-thon” where they work on authentic environmental health projects. The Code-a-thon will allow participants to practice data ethics skills in peer code review, reproducibility, and transparency in a supportive environment. Additionally, to ensure that we are responsive to the needs of the diverse participants, we will allow learners a mechanism to provide anonymous feedback throughout and beyond the program. To create scalability, we will adapt a companion Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) so that potentially thousands of participants can benefit. We will also harness the strengths of in-person instruction by creating a yearly training for instructors hoping to reproduce this course in their own institution or community. These efforts will be bolstered by an online data community where participants can support, troubleshoot, and collaborate with peers, as well as monthly reminder newsleęers to help participants retain what they learn. We will work with our existing network of faculty from under-resourced institutions to recruit researchers and faculty specifically from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Community Colleges to participate in the live course. The course will be offered for free and half of the participants will receive travel stipends to help break down barriers to participation. Throughout, learners will work with relevant health equity datasets with the ultimate goal of understanding and addressing disparities in environmental health equity.
Science Code(s)/Area of Science(s) Primary: 87 - Institutional Training/Institutional Career Development Grants
Secondary: 03 - Carcinogenesis/Cell Transformation
Publications No publications associated with this grant
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