The Cambridge Institute of Public Health continues to support public health professionals throughout their careers. This includes offering training to Public Health Registrars and providing a range of short courses throughout the year addressing topics within biostatistics, public health intelligence and epidemiology.
Biostatistics courses
The MRC Biostatistics Unit runs a number of short courses at the Cambridge Institute of Public Health. Topics range from courses on Introduction to Bayesian Monte Carlo Methods in WinBUGS software to Practical Use of Multiple Imputation to Handle Missing Data. Members of the MRC Biostatistics Unit teach on five Masters courses at the University of Cambridge. Several staff supervise, examine, lecture and organise modules in biostatistics, clinical trials and psychiatric epidemiology for the MPhils in Epidemiology and Public Health. Other contributions are to the MPhil in Computational Biology, the Master of Mathematics (Applied Statistics and Statistics in Medical Practice) and the MPhil in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics.
Foundation course
Public Health England’s Knowledge and Intelligence Team (East) runs the Public Health Foundation Course in Health Intelligence, which was established for users of public health intelligence, including local authority members and practitioners responsible for planning and applying public health interventions. This has trained over 500 public health staff in the East of England. The Public Health England (PHE) Eastern Field Epidemiology Unit (EFEU) offers continuing education for health services and public health professionals and looks after the Health Protection Module of the Masters degree programme in Public Health at the University of Cambridge. We also supervise students on the MPhils in Epidemiology and Public Health.
The aim is to improve understanding and interpretation of health intelligence through practical examples, and to aid effective commissioning and needs assessment.
This short course covers a variety of aspects of public health intelligence, from understanding populations, to data sources, through to data visualisation and indicator comparisons.
The course is free to attend for NHS, Local Authority, CCG and third sector organisations. It is held quarterly in Cambridge at the Institute of Public Health.
Pioneering partnership at NIHR CLAHRC East of England: research by staff in health and social care services
The use of research evidence in health and social care should be an everyday occurrence. For this to happen, clinical and non-clinical staff need to be encouraged to scrutinise and question the way things are done, and to welcome innovation, ensuring more rapid diffusion and adoption of evidence-based best practice. Capacity development to enable staff to have the skills to understand and carry out research is a major component of the CLAHRC East of England, an academic/service partnership to improve health. The focus is on local applied research and evaluation projects and the aim is to enable the Fellows to make sense of the research world and promote the use of research based evidence in healthcare organisations.
