Lester R. Curtin and Myron Katzoff, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 13th Biennial Symposium on Statistical Methods will be held at the Holiday Inn Conference Center in Decatur, Georgia (Atlanta metropolitan area), May 24–25. The theme of this year’s conference is “Statistical Applications Using Massive and Emerging Data in Public Health.”
As health information technology continues to advance, larger and more complex data sets will be available to researchers for both primary and secondary data analysis. These data sets could be based on standardized administrative records collected through federal entitlement programs, private health insurance or health provider companies, large or combined clinical trials, or state-based health record systems. With the emergence of such large and complex data sets come new statistical, logistical, and legal problems.
The focus of this year’s CDC symposium will be on statistical applications for complex networks, administrative and legal (privacy) issues in data linkage, and the confidentiality issues that may arise in primary and secondary analysis of large linked data sets for the confidentiality for new and emerging data sets. Special emphasis will be placed on the use of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for epidemiological studies and public health research and surveillance.
A short course on complex networks and statistics will be offered on May 23 in conjunction with the symposium. The course will be taught by Eric Kolaczyk from Boston University and be based on his book Statistical Analysis of Network Data. The course will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and focus on network mapping (creating a network representation), network sampling (in particular, respondent-driven sampling), network modeling, and the dynamics of networks with respect to contact processes and epidemics.
There will be invited and contributed oral presentations and contributed poster sessions. Provision has been made for session topics to include statistical and epidemiological applications of the large CMS data set; design issues based on adaptive sampling and related methodology; analytic innovations in public health surveillance and medical screening applications using multiple data sources; analysis of text, image, or qualitative data; secondary analysis of nonpublic released data sets; and simulation models for predicting disease outcomes.
This venue provides statisticians, social and behavioral scientists, epidemiologists, economists, policy analysts, and other health researchers a unique opportunity to gain knowledge and stimulate further methods development in the area of massive data sets and complex networks and to exchange ideas with symposium contributors through formal and informal discussions. Presenters represent academia, private industry, and federal and local government agencies.
The CDC Statistical Advisory Group, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the ASA are sponsoring the symposium to promote the development and application of statistical methods. This symposium is designed to draw from statistical and related quantitative and information sciences across a variety of public health applications, disciplines, and information technology concepts that relate to emerging data sets and the ability to synthesize such information for use in public health practice. Visit the CDC website for more information.
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