Outgoing Message from Our 2021 Chair

Greetings from the outgoing TSHS Section chair! As I pass the baton to our new 2022 Section chair, Jacqui Hicks, I wanted to share some highlights of what our section has been doing over the last year.

JSM 2021

Despite the pandemic, our section sponsored several excellent sessions at the virtual Joint Statistics Meetings in August 2021. On Monday afternoon we sponsored a panel discussion on “Engaging Minority and Underserved Populations in Health Science: Education and Training for Careers in Statistics and Data Science”, organized and chaired by Madhu Mazumdar (Mount Sinai). On Tuesday afternoon we sponsored an invited panel discussion on “Assessing PhD Readiness in Biostatistics” organized and chaired by Tom Braun (Michigan). On Wednesday morning we sponsored a panel discussion on “Teaching Anti-Racism in Statistical Training: Progress and Needs”, organized by Amy Laird (OHSU) and chaired by Jodi Lapidus (OHSU). And on Thursday afternoon we sponsored a session on “Teaching Statistics in the Health Sciences: Innovations, Updates, and Best Practice”, organized by Philip Sedgwick (ULondon) and chaired by Jacqui Hicks (Boston University), which included papers on decolonizing quantitative methodology, pivoting to online teaching, and null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST), among others. We also offered two roundtable discussions and held our annual meeting and mixer. Thank you to all the organizers, chairs and speakers, and a particular thank you to the 2021 program chair, Jaya Satagopan (Rutgers), and the 2022 program chair, Brandon George (Thomas Jefferson), for putting together these excellent sessions!!

Awards

We were happy to be able to celebrate the accomplishments of our members at our virtual annual meeting and mixer. This year’s winners of TSHS section awards were:

• Outstanding Teaching Award: Mary Sammel, University of Colorado

• Young Investigator Award: Mine Dogucu, University of California Irvine

• Distinguished Achievement Award: Felicity Enders, Mayo Clinic

• Council of Sections’ Section Service Award: Amy Nowacki, Cleveland Clinic

• Best Presentation Award (JSM 2020): Sujata Patil, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

In addition, the best presentation award from JSM 2021 was awarded after the meeting was over to Philip Martin Sedgewick from St. George’s University of London for his presentation “Trials and Tribulations of Teaching NHST in the Health Sciences.” Thank you to all those who volunteered to review the presentations this year! And congratulations again to all of our award winners!!!

Webinars

This year the webinars committee arranged three webinars. In March 2021, Subha Nair (HHMSPB NSS College for Women, India) arranged and led a panel of statistics educators from India, Canada and the US in a panel discussion of ‘Teaching Statistics Online During the Pandemic – Sharing Experiences from Multiple Continents’. In June 2021, Mike Swartz (UT Health) presented a webinar on ‘Rubrics and Flipped Classrooms’. And in November 2021, Philip Sedgwick (University of London) reprised his award winning presentation from JSM 2021 on ‘Null Hypothesis Significance Testing’. Thanks to the webinars committee chair, Tom Braun (Michigan) for arranging these excellent webinars! You can find the recordings for all of our past webinars on our section webpage, or on our section's YouTube channel.

Additional Resources for Teaching

In addition to the above, the TSHS Section offers other resources to help you in your teaching! Check these out:

Datasets: The TSHS Resources Portal provides open-access peer-reviewed health sciences-related datasets specifically intended for teaching. There are currently thirteen (13) datasets available. Each dataset is available in several formats, and is accompanied by an introduction, a data dictionary, and the citation for the original study publication. If you need datasets for teaching, check out the Portal. And if you have datasets that you would be able to share, please consider submitting them to the Portal for review. Contact our Portal co-director, Carol Bigelow, at cbigelow@schoolph.umass.edu.

Blog: The TSHS section blog contains a wealth of ideas about teaching. Check out the book reviews, the #ReadyResources, or the webinar recaps, to name a few. If you have ideas about teaching that you would like to share with others, consider writing a blog post! Contact our blog editor, John Doucette, at john.doucette@mssm.edu.

Community Forum: The TSHS community forum on the ASA’s website (members only) is a great way to share ideas, ask questions, or look for ideas or collaborators.

Getting Involved

As the past Section chair, my duties this year will include nominations. If you are interested in getting more involved with our section, do let me know! It is a great way to get to know other people with similar interests across the country, and it is a lot of fun too. We are currently looking for the following:

• Several people to serve on the Webinars committee to recruit speakers and arrange, host and record the section webinars. We have lots of ideas for good webinars, and need two or three people to make them happen.

• Several people to serve on the Career Development committee. If you have an interest in career-related issues such as getting promoted as teaching faculty, writing external letters, career tracks for non-tenure-track faculty, or mentoring, consider getting involved with this committee.

If any of these openings spark your interest, contact me (Ann Brearley, brea0022@umn.edu)!

In conclusion, thank you to all the Executive Committee members who contribute so much to keeping the section active and useful, and thank you to all Section members who have contributed in so many ways as well.

Take care,

Ann