Opportunity Description

The Winship Research Informatics shared resource (WRI) at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University is looking for second year MPH/ EMPH students who are interested in (Applied Practice Experience, APE) opportunities with National Cancer Database (NCDB) research projects.

The nationally recognized National Cancer Database (NCDB)—jointly sponsored by the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society—is a clinical oncology database sourced from hospital registry data that are collected in more than 1,500 Commission on Cancer (CoC)-accredited facilities. NCDB data are used to analyze and track patients with malignant neoplastic diseases, their treatments, and outcomes. Data represent more than 70 percent of newly diagnosed cancer cases nationwide and more than 34 million historical records. 

Projects Description

The projects provides valuable opportunities (which could also be counted towards the APE) for MPH/ EMPH students to gain practical experiences with getting familiarized with national cancer registry data, communications on research designs and analytic findings, statistical analyses, and understandings of research cycle of public health analyses. The research questions were proposed by clinicians from Winship Cancer Institute, aiming at evaluating the treatment outcomes of the latest cancer management strategy, consolidating effectiveness of treatments from previous case series reports, exploring incidence and epidemiology of rare cancers, etc.

The projects are intended for abstract presentations such as American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and journal submissions, so there are also plenty of authorship opportunities for conference abstracts and manuscripts for academic journals. According to the feedbacks from the students graduated in the past years, analytic experiences and authorships gained from participating in the projects, have added significant advantages in their job seeking and further academic developments. The operations of the projects are remote friendly, and have fully evolved into remote mode as responding measure to the pandemic of COVID-19.

Requirements

Second year MPH/ EMPH students with good oral and written communication skills, some experience with cancer data analysis, solid understanding of statistical tests and models (Chi-squre, ANOVA, log-rank test, logistic regressions, Cox-proportional hazard models, time dependent Cox models, etc.), some experience with SAS macros, formats and ODS are also required.

How to Apply

Please send resume to Renjian Jiang, MD, MPH, MS (rjiang7 [at] emory [dot] edu) if interested.