Dr. Liang Wang Selected as International Teaching Seminar Fellow

Dr. Liang Wang, Associate Professor in the Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology of the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health, was selected as a Fellow of the 49th Ten Day International Teaching Seminar on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention held in Bandar Sunway, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The seminar comprised a daily program of four one-hour lectures and a small group activity. The lectures covered the principles of epidemiology including concepts and methods of investigation, inference, the major findings of cardiovascular epidemiology, and application of these findings to goals, strategies, and assessment of cardiovascular disease prevention programs. A concurrent series of lectures on biostatistics aimed to provide an introduction to key biostatistics concepts and methods used in epidemiologic research.

Fellows are allocated to four groups with faculty facilitators. The small groups meet daily and encourage more active individual participation, helping fellows to work together to address the practical problems of doing research to answer real questions. Each group presented its proposed study design to the others with spirited exchange of criticisms and comments and defense of choices made. This was followed by a final summing up of some of the major issues in epidemiological research. Fellows have often subsequently developed many of the questions and study designs discussed in previous seminars into full research projects, often with international collaboration with other seminar fellows.

The 49th seminar built on the tradition of this annual event, which aims to accomplish not just the training of an international corps of people working on the prevention of cardiovascular disease and improvement of health for all but the making of bridges across countries and cultures through peaceful international scientific cooperation.