Statistical Services help doctors in Berlin

Thursday, 12 August 2010

Course participants with Professor Dankmar B├Âhning and Mr James Gallagher

Doctors from around the world heard from Reading experts Professor Dankmar Böhning (Applied Statistics) and Mr James Gallagher (Director of the Statistical Services Centre) about epidemiological methods and their application in the real-world.

Dankmar and James delivered the Advanced Epidemiology Methods course at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Charité University, Berlin. The 16 doctors, who were from nine different countries across Africa, Asia and Europe, were taking the annual course which forms a module on the MSc in International Health organised within the TropEd European Network for Education. Different partner institutions within the network provide different modules, and course credits are transferred using the European Credit Transfer system.

Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of a population, which informs interventions that are made in the interest of public health and preventative medicine. The doctors learnt how to collect and analyse data, in order to formulate hypotheses and therefore intervene in particular situations that could harm public health. This could be especially useful, as the MSc in International Health aims to produce health professionals who will work in areas primarily related to poverty in developing countries. 

From 1 August 2010 the Statistical Services Centre sits within the new School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences.