Bangdiwala leads clinical trials course in India
July 21, 2010 | |
Shrikant Bangdiwala, PhD, research professor of biostatistics at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, is conducting a short course on clinical trials at Vellore, India’s Christian Medical College (CMC) this summer. The week-long program, “Clinical Trials: Design, Analysis, Reporting and Interpretation,” is held at the College’s Biostatistics Resource and Training Center. This is the third time Bangdiwala has been asked to offer the course, driven in great part by demand from pharmaceutical and contract research organizations in south Asia. Participants include medical officers and biostatisticians in charge of developing protocols and managing clinical trials. Bangdiwala has been instrumental in the development of CMC’s Department of Biostatistics, with collaborations begun in 1998 under the auspices of UNC’s International Clinical Epidemiology Network program. His early efforts included data management training and conducting the first study of intrafamily violence in India, called IndiaSAFE, and led to the establishment of the Biostatistics Resource and Training Center at CMC-Vellore, a unique statistical coordinating center in south Asia, managing several national epidemiological studies and clinical trials. UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health has an active memorandum of understanding with CMC-Vellore. Bangdiwala has conducted other workshops and short courses there – on diagnostic testing and multilevel modeling – and three students from CMC-Vellore have come to UNC-Chapel Hill for graduate work. This year, Shankar Viswanathan will earn a Doctor of Public Health, and Visali Jeyaseelan completes a Master of Public Health, both in biostatistics. CMC’s Nithya Neelakantan was a visiting scholar in 2009. UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu. |