Join us tomorrow from 11 a.m. to noon in the SPH lecutre hall for the first Passport Program seminar, hosting Dr. Scott L. Zeger, interim provost and biostatistics professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health of Johns Hopkins University. To sign up to attend, click here.
"Dr. Zeger is a world-renowned biostatistician, and we're honored that he's agreed to speak with us," says Dr. Deborah Young, chair of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UMD SPH.
In his presentation titled "Quantitative Reasoning (aka Biostatistics) to Advance the Public’s Health," Dr. Zeger will outline the key roles of and some advancements made through biostatistics in public health. Dr. Zeger will also list three examples of biostatistics in action, having to do with micronutrient supplementation, smoking and air pollution.
Dr. Young says that the presentation will discuss modern biostatistic methods, in addition to the traditional. She expects that the presentation will help students to correlate what they've learned in the classroom to real-life situations. "Even though they're given examples in class of how these methods can be used, they may remain somewhat perplexed about when to use what method. They may questions their ability to choose the appropriate method when they're in the workplace," says Young.
The Passport Program entails all SPH undergraduate and graduate students to attend at least five seminars that pertains to each of the five competencies of the School. The purpose of the program is to encourage a holistic understanding of public health. As detailed in the School's self study and Web site, attendance at tomorrow's program should fulfill the first competency listed: to be able to explain the basic principles of epidemiology, especially the factors that influence the incidence, distribution, determinants and control of health-related states or events in populations.
In order to receive credit for attending, students must register before attending.
Dr. Donald Milton, chair of the Institute of Environmental Health at UMD says that all public health students will benefit from familiarizing themselves with biostatistics, recognizing in particular the use for those in the Environmental Health track. "Quantitative evidence on causality is fundamental to understanding environmental health and evaluating risks from occupational and environmental exposures. It is also essential for evaluation of successful interventions," he says.
Dr. Zeger earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of Pennsylvania and acquired his PhD in statistics from Princeton University in 1982. He became an assistant professor of biostatistics at Johns Hopkins that year and became a professor in 1991.
Among his accomplishments, as listed on the Bloomberg SPH webiste:
--- He was a co-receiver of the 1987 Snedecor Award by the American Statistical Association for best paper in biometry after assisting in the development of the method of generalized estimating equations to draw valid and efficient scientific inferences from correlated data.
--- He contributed to environmental epidemiologic studies of the effects on health of smoking and air pollution and to clinical research on HIV, cognitive loss after cardiac surgery, normative aging and other topic.
--- He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Statistical Association
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