Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Surveillance Course

Introduction
This course is developed and directed by the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics of the Department of Community Health Sciences (CHS).

The course is design ed to enable health professional to develop a scientifically sound, and practical approach for identification of challenging field health problems and their effective solution. This has been offered regularly since 1994 and to date 18 courses have been offered for 408 participants. Off campus specially design ed version of this course has also been offered on request within and outside Pakistan.

Goal
This training aims to provide participants the practical skills of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Surveillance to better understand the health problems and their effective solutions.

Objectives
By the end of the course, the participants would be able to:

• Understand and apply the basic principles of Epidemiology and Biostatistics;
• Design a feasible and valid study to address an important health issue in their programmes.

Who Should Attend
Junior and mid management level personnel of public and private organisations and individuals interested in developing an understanding of basic concepts in Epidemiology and Biostatistics and writing a research protocol.  

Course Outline

• Measures of diseases frequency: Incidence and prevalence
• Sampling methods
• Epidemiological study designs
• Measures of association
• Bias, chance and confounding
• Causal inference
• Questionnaire design and its administration
• Investigation of an epidemic
• Surveillance
• Screening and diagnostic tests: Sensitivity and specificity
• Measures of fertility and mortality
• Descriptive: Introduction of population, samples, and variables
• Organising, summarising and displaying data
• Inferential: Estimation of population means and standard deviation, hypothesis testing (basic element, chi-square, t-test and McNemar's test).

Project Development
Through this exercise participants acquire hands on experience of applying concepts and skills learned to address an identified research issue related to their work. 

Pre-course Task
Participants are required to identify the project topic and prepare in advance the background information that can be utilised while designing individual projects. 

Medium of Instruction
As English is the exclusive language of instruction, participants must be comfortable to read, write and speak in English language. 

Participants' Evaluation
The participants' learning is evaluated through marks obtained in multiple-choice questions (pre and post-tests) at the beginning and end of the course as well as on the basis of project assignment. 

Educational Strategies
The basic educational strategy will be 'Learning by Doing'. This will be accomplished through lectures, tutorials, field visit, and project development. 

Duration of the Course
The duration of the course is 21 working days. The scheduled dates are from June 14 to July 09, 2010, both days inclusive.

Tuition Fee
The course tuition fee is Rs 28,000/= (US$ 400/= applicable for international participants), which covers classroom instructions, course material, refreshment, and simple lunch during working hours.  

Deadline to Receive Applications
Interested candidates should send brief CV along with filled Registration Form latest by April 05, 2010 to:

Mr Amin Hirani
Senior Programme Officer
Continuing Education Programme
Community Health Sciences Department
Email: amin.hirani@aku.edu
Tel: +92-21-34864839/34864811

Course Director
Dr Sameera Ali Rizvi
Senior Instructor
Tel: +92-21-34864805
Email: sameera.rizvi@aku.edu