DataTrail and its Extensions – How You Can Build a Local Pipeline of Talent for Your Medical Center
Jeff Leek, Chief Data Officer, Vice President, and J Orin Edson, Foundation Chair of Biostatistics, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
There is a shortage of entry-level data science and data manager talent at most major medical institutions. Many of these major medical centers are also located in close proximity to opportunity deserts – neighborhoods with little educational and economic opportunity. In this keynote from R/Med 2023, Jeff discussed the DataTrail https://www.datatrail.org/ program developed at Johns Hopkins and now running at multiple sites around the country. This program combines high-throughput educational technologies and deep low throughput community collaboration to create data science training and placement for young people in jobs at medical centers near where they live. Jeff discussed how the team developed this program, the results of the training program, challenges and opportunities for matching young people to data opportunities, and how you can build a DataTrail at your medical center. The keynote presentation wrapped up with a Q&A session.
Main Sections
0:00 Introduction
1:35 DataTrail and background information
8:44 Income Inequality as a public health problem
9:36 What does this have to do with education?
13:27 Low-cost online data science programs are popular
13:57 Can MOOC programs improve student employment prospects?
16:44 Significant barriers to entry
20:56 Why R? The DataTrail partnership
22:37 A part of a global effort
23:43 The ecosystem approach works for training!
24:25 Pilot program
33:06 Problem Forward Data Science
34:54 “Hard things are hard to do”
36:11 Impact
40:01 Lessons learned
43:21 We need advocates
46:24 We need mutually intensive learning
47:00 The Future of DataTrail
47:53 Your turn: Get involved
49:55 DataTrail on GitHub @Datatrail-jhu
51:41 Create an extension course!
53:00 OTTR Project
53:27 To run a franchise
55:07 Questions or want to get involved?
55:20 Your turn: pay it forward
57:23 Thank you and Q&A
More Resources
R/Medicine Event site: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/r-...
Main Site: https://www.r-consortium.org/
DataTrail: https://www.datatrail.org/
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