January – February 2018
Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
In January-February 2018, Principal Investigators Kiros Berhane (University of Southern California – USC) and Jonathan Samet (University of Colorado – UC) led two consecutive workshops at Addis Ababa University School of Public Health to train Hub investigators and data management and analysis team members. The first workshop (January 26-27) was conducted by both Kiros Berhane (USC) and Jonathan Samet (UC) and focused on the fundamental principles of the hospital based time series study of the daily fluctuations in ambient air pollution on mortality and morbidity counts. The key training outcomes were understanding of the design of the time series study, data management aspects of both air pollution and mortality/morbidity data, tools for visualizing data, principles of the Poisson time series models of counts, and implementation of the modeling techniques via hands on training using the R statistical software. The second workshop (January 29 – February 1) was conducted by Kiros Berhane (USC) and focused on the fundamental principles of the multi-level design on which the Children’ Health Study is based, exploratory and visualizing techniques of both exposure and respiratory outcome data in children, technical details of the multi-level mixed effects modeling techniques and implementation of the techniques using the R statistical software. In addition to the hands-on training on the use of the R software, local data analysis team members made several presentations on preliminary analysis of the data from the recently completed children’s health study in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), data on time series counts of mortality and morbidity that has been collected from six major hospitals since September, 2016, the exposure data that has been collected at a central site location on the premised of the School of Public Health as well as 10 schools that were part of the Children’s Health Study. In addition, several issues around the data management and analysis of the ongoing household air pollution study in Addis Ababa were discussed. Hub related issues were discussed in detail during a courtesy visit to the offices of the new School of Public Health dean Mitike Molla.
