Event Title
Montcalm Care Network Biostatistics Internship: Health Status Project
Description
PURPOSE: Internship experiences are a foundational part of the Professional Science Master’s programs as they give work experience to students looking to further their careers in industry. Montcalm Care Network (MCN) is one of the sites that hosted an internship experience and is the community mental health provider for Montcalm County. CHALLENGE: The main challenge was to build upon the previous biostatistics intern’s project by dividing data based on demographic information to find influential factors on individuals’ health statuses. Other challenges included extensive exploratory data analysis to narrow down variables and utilizing techniques to impute missing values. EXPERIENCE: More experience was gained in pulling data using the SQL programming language. RStudio was used extensively to manipulate and impute data as well as for exploratory analysis and running ordinal logistic regression models. MS Power BI was learned and utilized to create graphics for reporting results. OUTCOME: Data was divided by age group and gender. Ordinal logistic regressions were run with backward selection to determine significant variables in impacting individuals’ health statuses. Six models were fitted for a combination of 3 age groups and gender. IMPACT: Results were presented to managers at MCN. Information gained from analysis was utilized by case workers at MCN to understand how to better advise and aid their clients in improving their health statuses. Real world work experiences help us gain a better understanding of how to apply the skills and knowledge gained from our coursework.
Montcalm Care Network Biostatistics Internship: Health Status Project
PURPOSE: Internship experiences are a foundational part of the Professional Science Master’s programs as they give work experience to students looking to further their careers in industry. Montcalm Care Network (MCN) is one of the sites that hosted an internship experience and is the community mental health provider for Montcalm County. CHALLENGE: The main challenge was to build upon the previous biostatistics intern’s project by dividing data based on demographic information to find influential factors on individuals’ health statuses. Other challenges included extensive exploratory data analysis to narrow down variables and utilizing techniques to impute missing values. EXPERIENCE: More experience was gained in pulling data using the SQL programming language. RStudio was used extensively to manipulate and impute data as well as for exploratory analysis and running ordinal logistic regression models. MS Power BI was learned and utilized to create graphics for reporting results. OUTCOME: Data was divided by age group and gender. Ordinal logistic regressions were run with backward selection to determine significant variables in impacting individuals’ health statuses. Six models were fitted for a combination of 3 age groups and gender. IMPACT: Results were presented to managers at MCN. Information gained from analysis was utilized by case workers at MCN to understand how to better advise and aid their clients in improving their health statuses. Real world work experiences help us gain a better understanding of how to apply the skills and knowledge gained from our coursework.