They’ve Got Your Number

Do race, sex and insurance status influence treatment of heart attacks? What’s the relationship between denture cast size and denture tooth size? Can a two-hour glucose tolerance test predict heart disease better than traditional methods?

These questions may seem like the domain of health care providers…and they are…but the answers involve a good bit of number-crunching as well, as Medical College of Georgia students are learning.

Georgia’s first fully funded state master of science in biostatistics program, which began in 2006, has eight students midway through the two-year program and four more who began this fall. Dr. Jennifer Waller, associate professor and director of graduate programs in MCG’s Department of Biostatistics, says the department can’t keep up with demand. “I don’t think we can train biostatisticians fast enough to meet the need.”

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents has approved a second master’s program in clinical and translational science that will start next summer, and a Ph.D. program will enroll biostatistics doctoral students next fall.

Dr. Waller anticipates approximately 20 students per year when all three programs are operational, with 10 instructors.

It’s a far cry from the former MCG Office of Biostatistics, which operated primarily as a service center for campus. In 2004, the office became an academic department that accepted its first students in 2006, training them to become biostatisticians in a collaborative environment.

That collaboration is a critical element of student training at MCG. While there are plenty of biostatistics programs nationwide, those with MCG’s hands-on approach are rare.

“This is much more of an applied program,” says Dr. Waller, “We’re training people to be consulting statisticians rather than theoretical statisticians. We want to teach students how to get their hands dirty, how to take massive data and make sense of it, how to work with an investigator as a collaborator. A lot of other programs don’t necessarily focus on that collaborative effort that goes on between an outside investigator and a statistician.”

Biostatisticians analyze data from medical and biological research by studying variability—what distinguishes how groups differ. Researchers and statisticians often don’t understand each other’s language, says Dr. Waller, “so they’re teaching us and we’re teaching them. We all have to understand each other in order to get a finished product out there that makes sense, has integrity and hasn’t crossed any ethical boundaries. We have to communicate what the data mean to investigators in their terms. We have to understand a little bit about the medical, biological and clinical aspects behind the research to communicate effectively. Sometimes it’s difficult because the researchers are using their jargon and we’re using ours. We have to try and make our languages work together.”

MCG biostatistics students get to practice this critical skill early, participating in campus projects directly with investigators as part of a summer consulting class.

“It’s been fun,” Nathan Baker, a student says of the summer program, in which he studied prostate cancer awareness and beverage intake’s relation to body mass index. “I haven’t had biology since high school in the early ’90s, so when I got here, I was just terrified I was going to have to learn again how a cell structure was put together, how arteries were built and all these DNA sequences. Most of the researchers are really good about laying out what they’re doing, what the variables are and how things work in their general form. With a few hours of reading, I can understand what I’m working with, what they’re looking for and how the system works. I’m not as scared to look at variables with funny names now.”

“We always work under the guidance of a faculty member or two,” says student Ahn Le, whose projects involved health disparity issues on insurance reimbursement and colorectal cancer morbidity rates. “Every step I take in analyzing the data, I am ensured it’s the correct way to do it with the support of the faculty. All the clients have always been very nice and cooperative.”

“It’s been very positive. The faculty on campus we have worked with have been very supportive,” agrees Dr. Waller.

With summer projects under their belts, students are preparing research or consulting projects for their final year. Most are expected to engage in a major collaborative consulting project, but prospective Ph.D. candidates are likely to undertake a thesis involving statistical analysis research.

What’s it like being the first group in a new program?

“Stressful. Pressure,” says Mr. Baker. “Got to live up to expectations. A ‘B’ means that you didn’t do well enough.”

“It’s hard because we don’t have anybody ahead of us to talk to about it,” concurs Ms. Le. “Especially if the courses are hard or you have to prepare for exams, we have no feedback but the professors. But the faculty have been wonderful, because we work one on one. They’ve always been very, very supportive and very friendly.

“We’re the first class. We’re the guinea pigs, but the guinea pigs have special privileges sometimes,” she says with a laugh. “This whole class is so close. I think even the faculty realize how bonded we are.

“We’re so new, people don’t realize how interdisciplinary we are; we work with the Schools of Dentistry and Medicine, with the residents, the medical graduate program, the Ph.D.s, the biomedical sciences, oral biology people, even with a lot of nursing and health informatics, yet no one know who we are.”

That’s likely to change.

“We’re pretty busy,” stresses Dr. Waller. “We’re trying to grow this department and offer students another opportunity to further their career. Our master’s in clinical and translational science will start next summer. It will focus on clinicians who don’t necessarily have a research background and give them the skills to do research.”

MCG biostatistician graduates will be prepared to design experimental and observational studies and clinical trials; confirm that hypotheses are testable; translate hypotheses into numbers of test subjects; analyze results; and write final manuscripts—in short, immersion from beginning to end, significantly contributing to research in all biomedical sciences.

Dr. Waller anticipates most graduates will find work in the corporate world for a pharmaceutical or biotech company, consult with physicians or other researchers, or work in government. Median annual salaries for entry-level industry positions requiring master’s degrees start around $65,000. Opportunities are available in academic research centers as well, in medicine, nursing, dentistry, allied health sciences and biological sciences.
As with anything new, the program has had some growing pains.

“We’re still working through some of the kinks,” says Dr. Waller, “trying to adjust some things that didn’t quite work out how we wanted, but we’re learning.

“We’re moving forward, trying to improve what we’re doing,” she adds. “We’re better than we were a year ago, we’re learning as we go, and we understand a little better about where we want to be.”

--Sharron Walls