CTSI’s Biostatistical Design and Analysis Center (BDAC) has partnered with the Association for Clinical and Translational Science (ACTS) Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Research Design Special Interest Group (BERD-SIG) to create the Biostats4You website.
The website identifies and reviews biostatistical training tools and resources for medical and public health researchers and professionals who wish to learn more about biostatistics. Each of the training resources is vetted by leading experts in biostatistics who make up the BERD-SIG workgroup.
The site fills a need for aggregated, high-quality training tools that are accessible to a wide audience. While creating a training module to assist researchers, the BDAC and BERD groups identified multiple resources that filled biostatistics training needs, but were spread out and had not been vetted or reviewed. BDAC surveyed University of Minnesota health sciences faculty in August of 2018 to identify their interests around statistics training, and used the results to determine relevant resources for the Biostats4You site.
Ann Brearley, PhD, CTSI Biostatistician and assistant professor in the University’s Division of Biostatistics, led the project and the BERD-SIG workgroup.
“BDAC and members of the BERD-SIG workgroup used our expertise to find the most useful tools and resources from institutes and biostatisticians around the country and make a curated resource list with reviews,” said Dr. Brearley. “We wanted to make sure these high-quality, free resources were available to clinicians and medical and public health researchers who wish to learn more about biostatistics.”
This collaboration grew from CTSI’s commitment to research workforce education and training. The resulting Biostats4You site collects and analyzes high-quality biostatistics resources that enhance workforce development for all researchers and research teams while benefiting other CTSA hubs.
CTSI’s BDAC team, Duke University's BERD Methods Core, University of Kentucky’s BERD core, University of California-Davis’s BERD program, University of Alabama-Birmingham’s BERD unit, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s VICTR Research Methods Program, and Delaware ACCEL Center for Translational Research contributed to this project.
The website, which launched in January 2020, is a developing project. Biostats4you will continue to grow and showcase more tools and training materials.The BERD-SIG workgroup and BDAC welcome feedback and input from clinicians, researchers, biostatisticians and other site users. To share feedback, email [email protected].
Learn more about BDAC’s work on CTSI’s Biostatistical Support page.