Pre-Conference courses

 

This year there are five interesting pre-conference courses that will take place on Wednesday June 8, 2022. Two pre-conferences will be held online in the morning and three pre-conferences will be live in the afternoon at the Radboudumc, Nijmegen. Participation with both a morning and afternoon session is possible.

Registration for pre-conferences is open for everybody and the costs depend on the online or live course and whether you will also attend the WEON or are member of the VvE. You will have to register for the pre-conferences in the WEON registration form.

Please note that WEON2022 reserves the right to cancel a pre-conference course if there is insufficient enrolment. In such an event, you will be offered the opportunity to switch to another pre-conference course. All pre-conference courses are on a first come, first serve basis.

Overview

Online (morning sessions)

1. How to apply a resilience approach to epidemiological research
2. Educate for the future – lifelong learning in epidemiology

Live (afternoon sessions)

1. How to build a growth model in R
2. What if Sherlock Holmes had become an epidemiologist? Countering confirmation bias in health sciences
3. The art of applied infectious diseases epidemiology

Costs
Online pre-conference:

• joining WEON                                             0 E
• not joining WEON & VvE member         25 E
• not joining WEON & no VvE member   35 E

Live pre-conference at Radboudumc:

• joining WEON & VvE member                35 E
• joining WEON or VvE member               45 E
• not joining WEON & no VvE member   55 E

Morning sessions

How to apply a resilience approach to epidemiological research

9:00u-12:00u      Online
Organization:     Geeske Peeters & René Melis (Radboudumc, dept. of Geriatrics)
                             Martijn Huisman & Almar Kok (Amsterdam Public Health)

What is resilience? How can it be applied in epidemiological research? What is the added value of this approach? And how can resilience be measured or quantified? During this interactive pre-conference, these questions will be addressed. While most people have an intuitive understanding of what resilience is, it’s definition and application is not straightforward. By applying a resilience approach, we can better understand why people respond differently to a similar exposure. Examples will be discussed using a variety of outcomes, settings and study designs. There will be opportunities for participants to discuss their own resilience-related research questions.
 

Educate for the future – Lifelong learning in epidemiology

9:00u-11:00u      Online
Organization:      Iris van Rooij, Rolf Groenwold, Michiel de Boer &
                              Maud Verhoef-Jurgens (VvE speergroep Onderwijs),
                              Femmie de Vegt (Radboudumc) & Noha El-Baz (UMCG)

The preconference on teaching epidemiology will focus on lifelong learning in epidemiology. Becoming an epidemiology professional is more than just following epidemiology courses, as skills and professional performance will develop by practice based learning.

We have invited Prof. Lia Fluit, professor in person centered and innovative learning and working in healthcare at Radboudumc, to introduce the concepts of lifelong learning and ‘adaptive expertise’. The latter is a broad construct that encompasses a range of cognitive, motivational and personality-related components. A distinguishing feature of adaptive expertise is the ability to apply knowledge effectively to novel problems. It requires interprofessional collaboration, team diversity and a safe learning environment, in which professionals can be appropriately trained.

There will be two examples from epidemiology programs concerning lifelong learning and professionality in epidemiology, by dr. ir. Cora Bustra (Wageningen University) and dr. ir. Natalie Terzikhan (Erasmus MC & NIHES Rotterdam).

After a break we will discuss in small groups on topics concerning adaptive expertise, professionality and practice-based learning.
 

Afternoon sessions

How to build a growth model in R

13:30u-17:00u       Live at Radboudumc
Organization:        Miriam Haaksma (LUMC, dept. of Public Health and Primary
                                Care) René Melis (Radboudumc, dept. of Geriatrics)

Growth modeling is a flexible statistical method which can be used to assess changes in disease/health trajectories over time. It can also be used to study determinants of these changes. In this hands-on workshop we will provide an introduction of the basic principles of growth modeling, after which we will focus on how to build a growth model in R. We will guide you through the model building process in a step-by-step fashion using example syntax and data, so make sure to bring your own laptop! We will use two modeling approaches: the linear mixed model (LMM) and the structural equation model (SEM).

Would you like to learn more on how to implement these methods in R? Subscribe to this preconference!

Please note: the next webinar of the VvE Special Interest Group for Growth Modeling will take place on April 21st 2022 and the content of this preconference workshop will partly overlap with the content of our webinars. However, during this workshop there will be more be room for experimenting with the model building process in R, for individual guidance, and for more specific questions regarding your own research data and analysis plan.
 

What if Sherlock Holmes had become an epidemiologist?
Countering confirmation bias in health sciences

13:30u-17:00u        Live at Radboudumc
Organization:         Mirte Boelens, Dana Moldovanu, Frank Wolters
                                 (VvE Werkgroep Junior Epidemiologen)

It is part of human nature to look for confirmation of preconceived ideas and discard inconsistencies, rather than challenge our prior beliefs. As a consequence, confirmation bias has often kept faulty scientific paradigms intact, despite –in retrospect– overwhelming evidence of the contrary. What is the impact of this bias on present-day science? And how might epidemiologists, as the guardians of validity, stand up to counter it?

In this afternoon symposium, we invite you to explore the problem of confirmation bias as well as potential solutions. We offer a cross-disciplinary programme, combining epidemiology with psychology, philosophy of science, and even thorough detective work to come to potential solutions to mitigate the impact of confirmation bias in all our research.
 

The art of applied infectious diseases epidemiology

13:00u-17:00u      Live at Radboudumc
Organization:       Alma Tostmann (Radboudumc)
                               Sonia Boender (Robert Koch Institute, Berlin)

The special interest group “Applied Infectious Disease Epidemiology” organizes this pre-conference workshop. In this workshop the concept and areas of so-called “field epidemiology” will be illustrated by different experts from the field, followed by a hands-on workshop where participants will conduct a case study on a real-life scenario infectious disease outbreak under the supervision of experienced field epidemiologists.

13:00-14:30 – Flash presentations
Tour along the different areas of Applied Infectious Disease (field) epidemiology, from the perspective of the national and regional public health, the Dutch Caribbean, the international context, the hospital and public health microbiology.
All presentations will focus on the topic vaccine-preventable diseases.

14:30-15:00 – Tea/Coffee break

15:00-17:00 – Workshop – EPIET Case study, outbreak investigation
In a hands-on scenario based case study, a real-life public health infectious disease problem will be assessed. The topic will be a vaccine-preventable disease and the objectives will include the identification and confirmation of the problem (or outbreak), the epidemiological assessment and the proposed control and response measures. The case study will be performed in groups of ~10 participants, under supervision of 1 or 2 experienced epidemiologists from this work field.