International Course in Nutritional Epidemiology

At a glance...

Duration: 2 weeks, full-time

Start date: 7 September 2009

End date: 18 September 2009

Course fee: £1,850, which includes participation in the course, manual and handouts, welcome reception, course dinner, coffee/tea/refreshments.

Accommodation, travel costs, lunch and dinner are not included.

Flyer:

Fellowships: WCRF International will be offering six fellowships covering the course fees.

Course Directors: Professor Arthur Schatzkin and Professor Elio Riboli

Course organisation: Dr Petra Wark

Tel: 44 (0)20 7594 8477
Email: p.wark@imperial.ac.uk

Application: Download, complete and return the Registration Form Word Document

About the course

This advanced and interactive course aims to give you a solid grounding in the knowledge and skills that are required to work as a nutritional epidemiologist. Participants are expected to have postgraduate level experience (MSC or PHD) in epidemiology.

The course will consist of lectures, computer tutorials, small-group paper-critique sessions and discussions with experts, with particular focus on current controversies in the field.

We will place strong emphasis on assessment of exposure (to include diet, body size, and physical activity), strengths and limitations of different study designs, and pertinent statistical issues, including how best to address measurement error and adjust for total energy intake.

You will learn to critically interpret results from nutritional epidemiological studies and evaluate the association between a given nutritional factor and disease. Current priorities in nutritional epidemiology, its future potential and challenges will be discussed. We will also address the translation of scientific findings into nutritional recommendations and policies.

Topics

Topics will include the following:

The importance of nutrition in the prevention of morbidity and mortality from chronic disease.
International trends and patterns in diet (including biomarkers of intake and status), body size (including the obesity epidemic), and physical activity.
Study design options in nutritional epidemiology (including potential differences between observational and experimental studies).
Assessment methods for diet (questionnaires, 24-hour recalls, food diaries; biomarkers; dietary patterns; food composition databases), anthropometry and physical activity (questionnaires, objective methods).
The problem of measurement error in nutrition-related exposures and approaches of how to deal with this (validity, reproducibility, de-attenuation, calibration).
Statistical methods (attributable risk, multivariate regression analyses, continuous versus categorical analyses, trend tests, lag analysis, transformation, handling outliers, interaction, confounding).
The role of meta-analysis in nutritional epidemiology.
Interpretation of nutritional epidemiological findings
Translation of nutritional epidemiology findings into dietary guidelines and health policies.
Interaction of nutritional epidemiologists with the media.

Faculty

The course faculty comprises members of world-class reputation from Imperial College London and leading institutions worldwide. There will be ample opportunity throughout the course to interact with the faculty.

Imperial College London

Professor Arthur Schatzkin (course director) - Imperial College/National Cancer Institute, USA
Professor Elio Riboli (course director)
Dr Petra Wark (course organiser)
Professor Paul Elliott
Professor Gary Frost
Dr Dominique Michaud
Dr Teresa Norat
Professor Petra Peeters

External

Dr Kate Allen - WCRF International
Mr Richard Evans - WCRF International
Professor Laurence Freedman - Gertner Institute for Epidemiology, Israel
Dr Tamara Harris - National Institute on Aging (NIA), USA
Dr Panagiota Mitrou - WCRF International
Dr Amy Subar - National Cancer Institute, USA
Dr Nicholas Timpson, University of Bristol
Professor Martin Wiseman - WCRF International

Please click here to read more about the faculty's expertise.

Supporting Organisations

Six fellowships will be made available by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) International. The Fellowships are part of a new educational initiative - the WCRF International Academy - which aims to provide educational opportunities to audiences ranging from scientists to the general public about the importance and impact of diet, physical activity and weight management in cancer prevention.

For more information on the WCRF International Academy, please visit their website . You can apply for one of the fellowships through indicating your interest on the registration form.