Education and Training

The Department of Population Health Science Policy is a leader in educating and training the next generation of translational scientists at Mount Sinai and nationally by means of new courses of instruction and research mentorship to students in the School of Medicine, and Biological Sciences and to junior faculty through the CTSA program.

Our multidisciplinary areas of instruction include the following among others:

  • Clinical research methods
  • Biostatistics
  • Data management
  • Economic analysis
  • Clinical epidemiology
  • Measurement of quality of life and functional status
  • Health policy
  • Information technology
  • Social networking
  • Health equity research

Our education and training programs include:

The Department has developed several new educational programs in the last few years.

The Masters of Health Care Delivery Leadership program, which inaugurated its first class in August 2014, addresses the national need to give health care executives the skills to lead their institutions amid dramatic health care reform. The program, which offers an MS degree in less than two years or in 20 months, is geared for mid-career and senior health care professionals of various disciplines seeking to improve their leadership skills and develop competencies. Instruction is largely delivered in a distance learning format with one week per year of face-to-face instruction on the Mount Sinai Campus. The program graduated its first class in May 2016.

The department recently developed a Master of Science in Biostatistics for the Graduate School. This program, which welcomed its first class in September 2015, is a one-year executive master’s program directed particularly to individuals who are working and now seek formal training in biostatistics (e.g., pharmaceutical industry, and CDC) or are aiming at pursuing a doctoral degree in biostatistics or epidemiology. In addition, the Center for Biostatistics supports the biostatistics track for students in Mount Sinai’s Masters of Public Health program and offers the Biostatistics Summer Program for Clinical Research. The mission of the summer program, now in its fourth year of instruction, is to increase the research capacity of clinical investigators, fellows, residents, postdocs, and public health professionals by providing application-driven instruction in biostatistics and statistical programming.

The Department’s faculty provides the leadership for several research training and mentorship programs at Mount Sinai, including the NCATS sponsored KL-2 mentored research training program for junior faculty in clinical and translational research, and a HRSA supported T-32 fellowship program in primary care research. The latter trains physicians in pediatrics, general internal medicine, geriatrics, and hospital medicine. The Center for Biostatistics offers the NIH/NIGMS-funded Applied Statistical Independence in Biological Systems (ASIBS) Short Course. The goal of the ASIBS Short Course is to train junior faculty and fellows from academic medical centers across the nation to become proficient in biostatistical methodology and statistical computing. Participants receive seven weeks of online, basic and intermediate statistical theory instruction, as well as five days of in-person, hands-on instruction in statistical computing. The course runs yearly from early January through early March, and it is directed at underrepresented minorities.

In addition, the CHECER faculty has obtained ECRIP Center grants in Diabetes and Cancer, and trains new generations of Health Equity & Community Engagement scholars.

To help mentor junior faculty and postdocs seeking their first NIH grant, the Department offers two programs, Reach for your First K, and the Reach for your First R during the spring and fall. Faculty and students meet bi-weekly over a 12-week period in a small seminar format that enables trainees to develop their grants proposals with critical review.

The faculty of Population Health Science and Policy also mentors individual research projects for students in the Medical School, particularly for those in the PORTAL MD, MSCR program, as well as for clinical fellows and residents in training. We also mentor several faculty K awards (e.g., diabetes, cardiology, cancer, adolescent medicine). CHECER hosts monthly Disparities and Social Determinants Journal Club Works in Progress sessions that draw diverse faculty, trainees, and students throughout the institution (including MDs and PhDs from varied disciplines) in a forum that stimulates collaboration. We work with Mentoring in Medicine and the Sophie Davis School for Biomedical Education to offer URM research opportunities in the community.

The Department also offers a bi weekly grand rounds program on topics relevant to health policy and clinical research.

ITE is recipient of a DOD training grant directed towards underserved undergraduate students from Historically Black Colleges, in order to promote diversity in science.

The Center for Biostatistics plans to offer the following new educational initiatives:

  • A new track of the MS in Biostatistics: the MS in Biostatistics Clinical Applications. This program is designed specifically for clinicians who want to increase their biostatistics and research methodology skills. Besides core courses in biostatistics, the program will offer a new course in Race and Causal Inference, and a grant writing course.
  • In collaboration with Conduits, we will develop the InCHOIR Learning Laboratory which will serve as a centralized repository for hands-on training in clinical translational science. This will be nine-month program, coinciding with the fall and spring academic semesters. The lab curriculum will include a series of monthly lectures on fundamental methods and concepts of the randomized clinical trial and will culminate with a two-day workshop in which participants will collaboratively design a real or hypothetical clinical trial.
  • In collaboration with the new leadership at the Mount Sinai Graduate School, faculty in the Center for Biostatistics will collaborate with other Graduate School faculty to streamline the curricula and fill in curricular gaps by offering new courses in statistical programming, for example, or collaborate in co-teaching existing courses.

Faculty

Annetine Gelijns, PhD
Alan Moskowitz, MD
Brian Nickerson, PhD
Emilia Bagiella, PhD
Emma Benn, DPH
Madhu Mazumdar, PHD
Natalia Egorova, PhD
Nina Bickell, MD

Administration

Herb Lopez
Mariana Bernstein
Molly Zitouni

The programs through which this training and instruction are offered are included below.

Center for Patient Oriented Research, Training, Education, and Development (CePORTED)

The Department has a leadership role in several of the programs offered by this educational component of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), Conduits, including the KL-2 mentored research training program for young faculty. The Department also co-directs the MS and PhD programs in clinical research, as well as the combined MS/MD program (PORTAL).

Training Programs

The Department provides training in clinical research practices to recipients of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) fellowship training grant in primary care research. We train five physicians from the specialties of pediatrics, general internal medicine, geriatrics, and hospital medicine.

Department Related Programs

Grand Rounds Program

The Department offers a bi weekly grand rounds program which covers topics relevant to health policy and clinical research.

Research Mentorship Program

The Department faculty actively provide mentorship for Medical Students (PRISM); thesis mentorship for graduate students in the MS and PhD program in Clinical Research, and project mentorship for fellows and young faculty from a variety of departments, including, neurosurgery, orthopedics, urology, pediatrics, general medicine, and surgery.

Two new programs that the Department has recently implemented funded by the CTSA (BERD & CePORTED) are Reach for your first R award directed by Dr. Bagiella, and Reach for your first K award directed by Dr. Moskowitz. Each program offers small group and individual instruction to young faculty and fellows over a three- to four-month period, during which participants develop their grant proposals with critical review.