EPIDEMIOLOGY, BIOSTATISTICS AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH

PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY

P

harmacoepidemiology is one of theprimary fields of study in theDepartment of Epidemiology andBiostatistcs at McGill University. This areaof epidemiological research is regroupedaround the McGill Pharmacoepidemiolgy
Research Unit that involves
faculty members, graduate
students and research
assistants. The Unit conducts
research into the uses, risks
and benefits of medications from a
population perspective. The Department ofEpidemiology and Biostatistics offers
programs for PhD and MSc degrees withspecial emphasis in pharmacoepidemiology
methods and applications. In the context of
this training program, five courses areoffered during the summer session anddescribed within this pamphlet, including
two new specialized courses. These courses
are offered to regular students registered ina program, as well as to special students or
simply for professional interest.

GENERAL STUDENT INFORMATIONSTUDENTS SEEKING PROFESSIONAL INTEREST
CERTIFICATE
Health professionals and others not seeking
academic credits are considered forenrolment as Professional Interest Student
in the Summer Session. Students areexpected to participate fully in course work,
including assignments and examinations.
The results will be available to students, butwill not be officially recorded by theuniversity and no formal university
transcript will be issued. These students
will receive a certificate of attendance fromthe Department of EBOH. Courses taken forProfessional Interest cannot subsequently
be applied to an academic programme.
Unfortunately, there are no exceptions.

STUDENTS FROM OTHER QUEBEC UNIVERSITIES
Degree students from other Quebec
universities wishing to take course(s) in ourdepartment must: Email the instruction for permission. Please
include your degree program and university
at which are enrolled, and provide reason
for wishing to take the course(s). Also
include a cc toandre.yves.gagnon@mcgill.ca
 Student need to apply online to CREPUQ andshould check their university website or
www.crepuq.qc.ca for procedures.

EPIDEMIOLOGY,
BIOSTATISTICS AND
OCCUPATIONALHEALTHVISITING STUDENTS
Students from universities outside of Quebec(but from within Canada must: Email the instruction for permission. Please
include your degree program and university
at which are enrolled, and provide reason
for wishing to take the course(s). Also
include a cc togradadmin.eboh@mcgill.ca
 Obtain Canadian Universities Graduate
Transfer Agreement form fromwww.cags.ca/agreements.php and follow
instructions indicated on the form.
IMPORTANT NOTE TO INTERNATIONALAPPLICANTS
Individuals coming to Canada to study for lessthan a six-month period do not have to obtaina Study Permit (student visa). Please checkwith Immigration Canada to ensure that you
will be able to enter and remain in Canada topursue your studies. PROFESSIONAL INTERESTSTUDENTS may come to Canada on a Visitor orTourist Visa, since our Summer Session is ofless than three months duration.
CONTACT DETAILS
Student Affairs Office, EBOH, McGill University
Tel: (1) 514-398-1812
Email: gradadmin.eboh@mcgill.ca
Website: https://www.mcgill.ca/epi-biostatocch/academic-programs/summer

Pharmacoepidemiology
courses

Summer Session

2023

PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY COURSES** SPECIALIZED COURSES**EPIB-633 PE I:INTRODUCTION TO PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGYDATE (IN-PERSON): MAY 23- MAY 26

EPIB 654 – PHARMACOECONOMICS FOR HEALTHTECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT

This course is designed to introduce concepts and principles of pharmacoepidemiology in the context of drug evaluation and therapeutic
decision-making. Topics to be covered include history of pharmacoepidemiology, choice of study design, sources of bias and their prevention
and control, the importance of prescribing and drug taking behaviours, sources and use of exposure and outcome data, assessing causality, andmeasures of association. Examples will be drawn from published pharmacoepidemiologic studies. Participants will have an opportunity to designand critique a study that addresses a current therapeutic controversy.

As pharmaceutical prices climb ever higher, determining what is areasonable price for a given benefit has become crucial. This course
introduces the basic economic problem and ways of addressing it;
including cost per QALY approach and newer alternatives. Methods forderiving required inputs–costs, effectiveness, utilities–and modelingstructures for putting them together, including newly-developed DICE
simulation are covered. Students will learn model construction andvalidation, analytic techniques and how to deal with uncertainty.
Unresolved challenges and possible solutions, such as efficiency
frontier and multi-criteria decision analysis, are explored.

Prof. Christel Renoux, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Neurology & Neurosurgery
Associate member, Epidemiology, Biostatistics andOccupational Health
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
christel.renoux@mcgill.ca

DATE (IN-PERSON): MAY 15 - MAY 18

Professor Renoux is a neurologist and epidemiologist whose researchinterests center on neuroepidemiology and pharmacoepidemiology.
Using large health databases, she evaluates the safety of medications,particularly related to neurological diseases, while applying advanced
epidemiological methods. She also studies the epidemiology ofcerebrovascular diseases.

Prof. Jaime Caro, MDCM, FRCPC, FACP

EPIB-631 PE II:
INTERMEDIATE PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGYDATE (IN-PERSON): MAY 29 - JUNE 1
This course will address methodological issues in pharmacoepidemiology through didactic lectures, group discussions, and the examinationof examples from the medical literature. Topics covered include themes related to exposure definitions, use of active drug comparators,latency, reverse causality, detection bias, new-user designs, healthy-user effects, and non-traditional study designs. In addition, the role ofconfounding and methods used to minimize its effects, such as propensity scores, are discussed in detail. This course will be of interest toresearchers, clinicians, regulators, and other knowledge users of pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety research.
Prerequisites: EPIB-633, or permission of instructor
Prof. Laurent Azoulay, PhD
Associate Professor
Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health and GeraldBronfman Dept of Oncology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
laurent.azoulay@mcgill.ca
Professor Azoulay is a cancer pharmacoepidemiologist withexpertise in the design and analysis of large
pharmacoepidemiologic studies. His research aims toprovide much needed information on the long-term effects ofcommonly-prescribed drugs on the incidence of cancer, while
also assessing the safety of cancer treatments in the realworld setting.

Prof. Kristian B. Filion, PhD FAHA
Associate Professor
Departments of Medicine and of Epidemiology,
Biostatistics & Occupational Health
McGill University, Montreal, Canada
kristian.filion@mcgill.ca
Professor Filion obtained his PhD from McGill University
and completed post-doctoral training at the University ofMinnesota. His research program focuses on
pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, with substantive
interests in cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He is aSteering Committee member of the Canadian Network for
Observational Drug Effect Studies (CNODES).

EPIB-661 PE III:ADVANCED PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGYDATE (IN-PERSON): JUNE 12 - JUNE 15
This course is designed to develop skills necessary in the critical appraisal of pharmacoepidemiological studies with a particular focus onadvanced methodological issues, study design, analysis and interpretation of results. The course will cover different study designs, including
cohort, case-control, nested case-control and within-subject, along with various sources of information and selection bias. The course will
focus on time-related biases and present solutions to avoid these biases. These issues will be addressed through a review of several
published pharmacoepidemiological studies, mainly using computerized healthcare databases.
Prerequisites: EPIB-633, EPIB-631 or permission of instructor
Prof. Samy Suissa, PhD
Director, Centre for Clinical Epidemiology
Jewish General Hospital
Professor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics
McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Prof. Antonios Douros, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Medicine(Division of Clinical Epidemiology)
McGill University, Montreal, Canada

samy.suissa@mcgill.ca

antonios.douros@mcgill.ca

Professor Suissa holds a Distinguished James McGill
Professor award at McGill University and heads theCanadian Network for Observational Drug EffectStudies (CNODES). A fellow of the Royal Society ofCanada, he received the FC Donders Award from
Universiteit Utrecht, Netherlands, and has publishedextensively on methods and studies of drug effects.

Prerequisites: Introductory Epidemiology or permission of instructor

Professor Douros is an Assistant Professor at McGill
University. He obtained his MD in 2009 and his doctorate
degree in 2012, and was trained in Clinical Pharmacology
from 2012 to 2016 at Charité in Berlin, Germany. Prof.
Douros studies drug effectiveness and safety in vulnerable
populations, including patients with liver disease or patientssubjected to polypharmacy and at risk of drug-druginteractions.

Adjunct Professor, Epidemiology & Biostatistics
and Medicine, McGill University,Montreal, Canada
jaime.caro@mcgill.ca
Professor Caro, Chief Scientist at Evidera, leads development of novel
techniques in pharmacoeconomics. He created a new modelingmethod—DICE simulation; leads its application in epidemiology, healthtechnology assessment, and virtual clinical trials; and is working onan alternative to the QALY and on better approaches for economic
evaluations.

EPIB 645 - CONFOUNDING CONTROL inPHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGYDATE (IN-PERSON): JUNE 5 -JUNE 6
This course covers modern methods to control confounding, one ofthe primary sources of bias in pharmacoepidemiology. Recent years
have seen several important developments in methods forconfounding control. Most of these methods are based on thepropensity score. This course will review the foundations of thepropensity score, the high-dimensional propensity score and inverse
probability weighting, and the disease risk score. Machine learning
methods will be discussed. Worked examples using SAS and R will
be discussed.
Prof. Robert Platt, PhD
Professor, Epidemiology, Biostatistics &Occupational Health and of Pediatrics, McGill
University,Montreal, Canadarobert.platt@mcgill.ca
Professor Platt is a professor in the departments of Pediatrics, and ofEpidemiology, Biostatistics, andOccupational Health (EBOH) at McGill
University. He holds the Albert BoehringerI endowed chair in
Pharmacoepidemiology. Dr. Platt is the Executive Co-Lead and leaderof the Methods team of the Canadian Network for Observational Drug
Effect Studies.