Teaching

EPIB-672: Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses
May 2010

Course Description

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are critical for evidence-based clinical and public health practice. The widespread and growing application of systematic reviews to synthesize evidence on key research and clinical questions makes it useful for health professionals to be able to understand and critique this research design. This course will provide a detailed description of the systematic review process, discuss the strengths and limitations of the method, and provide step-by-step guidance on how to perform a systematic review, and how to critically appraise systematic reviews.

Workshop in Montreal on the GRADE approach for diagnostic tests (February 2010)

This workshop will provide an overview of the GRADE approach, with specific emphasis on using GRADE for making recommendations about the use of diagnostic tests and strategies. For more information, click here.

Montreal Tuberculosis Course

Lecture 1: Global epidemiology of TB and TB in Canada Instructor: Kevin Schwartzman [Link]

Lecture 2: M. tuberculosis: organism, transmission, pathogenesis Instructor: Marcel Behr [Link]

Lecture 3: Diagnosis of latent TB infection Instructor: Madhukar Pai [Link]

Lecture 4: Diagnosis of active TB and drug-resistant TB Instructor: Jessica Minion [Link]

Lecture 5: Radiology of TB Instructor: Barry Rabinovitch [Link]

Lecture 6: Treatment of latent TB infection Instructor: Dick Menzies [Link]

Lecture 7: Treatment of active TB and MDR-TB Instructor: Dick Menzies [Link]

Lecture 8: Public health aspects of TB Instructor: Chris Greenaway [Link]

Lecture 9: International Standards for TB Care Instructor: Madhukar Pai [Link]

Case studies of bias in real life epidemiologic studies
By: Madhukar Pai & Jay S. Kaufman

Bias File 1. The Rise and Fall of Hormone Replacement Therapy [Link]

Bias File 2. Should we stop drinking coffee? The story of coffee and pancreatic cancer [Link]

Bias File 3. Émile Durkheim and the ecological fallacy [Link]

Bias File 4. The early controversy over estrogen and endometrial cancer [Link]

Bias File 5. How blind are the blind? The story of Vitamin C for common cold [Link]

Bias File 6. Double whammy: recall and selection bias in case-control studies of congenital malformations [Link]

Bias File 7. Confounding by indication: a most stubborn bias? [Link]

Bias File 8. Don't call my number, anymore! Bias in surveys of sexual behavior [Link]

These case studies can be freely used for education purposes with due credit.

EPIB-601 Fall 2009: Fundamentals of Epidemiology 1

Course Description

This course aims to provide a comprehensive introduction to modern epidemiologic concepts and methods. It is designed for graduate students in the MSc and PhD degree programs of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. This course provides, at the graduate level, fundamental concepts, principles, and methods of epidemiologic research and study design. Topics include definitions, measures of disease frequency and effect, study designs, bias and confounding.

In addition to lectures, students will participate in a practicum/laboratory session where they will engage in case studies, group discussions, article appraisals, and work on problem sets, quizzes, and lab exercises. The companion courses, 602 and 607, will cover other introductory topics in epidemiology and biostatistics.

Workshop on Systematic Reviews & Meta-analyses of Diagnostic Test Accuracy

Course Description

This will be a workshop focusing on Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses of Diagnostic Test Accuracy. Jointly instructed by Dr. Mariska M. Leeflang and Dr. Madhukar Pai. It is jointly presented by the Respiratory Epidemiology and Clinical Research Unit (RECRU) of the Montreal Chest Institute and the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group (CIDG).

Module on Diagnostic Research
Stellenbosch University, South Africa
March 4-7 2009

Course Description

Diagnosis is central to medical practice. It refers to knowing (“gnosis”) about the health of a client. Typically, diagnostic research focuses on estimating the sensitivity and specificity of individual diagnostic tests, their predictive values, and other parameters of interest (such as likelihood ratios, ROC curves, test reliability). Accuracy measures are then used to generate posttest probabilities, given a set of pretest probabilities. This module will cover the basic principles behind diagnostic research, diagnostic study designs, sources of bias, and analysis and interpretation of diagnostic accuracy data. Also, critical appraisal of diagnostic studies, and conventional and advanced methods for systematic reviews (meta-analyses) of diagnostic tests will be presented.

More recently, there is growing appreciation that “test research” focused on sensitivity and specificity is not necessarily the same as “diagnostic research.” Modern methods of diagnostic research focus on a process by which a patient’s test result can and should be considered in the context of other patient characteristics or test results. These methods enable direct estimation of individual probabilities of disease presence based on all diagnostic information and evaluation of the extent to which a particular diagnostic test has added value in the clinical context (i.e. incremental or added value analysis). This course will briefly introduce this multivariable approach to diagnostic research.

Workshop in Montreal on the GRADE approach for diagnostic tests
February 2010