Audience: From May 16-20 we held the first workshop as a continuing education opportunity. The workshops are both for helping create capacity as well as seeding networking and collaboration opportunities.

Attendees: 16 attendees from multiple institutions in Kenya attended all days including professional statisticians, data analysts, informatics professionals, university faculty members, and graduate students in statistics, informatics, or data science in Kenya working at universities, research centers, government ministries or NGOs focused on the analysis of biomedical and health data. Given that attendees all had previous training in foundational statistics and active project(s), the workshop focused on providing a breadth introduction to social determinants and data/analytic-specific challenges to their consideration in quantitative analyses.

Operations: Tuition free and selection by application only. The workshop was held entirely over zoom, over the course of 5 days. Each day consisted of a combination of lectures, presentations/case studies and hands-on activities. Each topic is underpinned by relevant case studies from Kenya that will also provide continuity across the week. The fifth day is reserved for student consultations on projects and publishing.

Workshop Topics:

• Social determinants theory

• Examples of research studies in Kenya with reference to social determinants and data science challenges

• Types of analytic questions (e.g. machine learning (ML) vs regression, prediction vs causal inference)

• Decision trees

• Social Determinants and ML

• Causal questions in health

• Multi-level regression and relevance of multi-level models for social determinants

• Bias in AI, algorithmic fairness & health disparities

Funding and financial support is provided by the Fogarty International Center of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grant U2RTW012121

Sessions led by Rumi Chunara, PhD; Rajesh Vedanthan, MD, MPH; Joseph Hogan, ScD and guest lectures (see links to daily materials below).

Hands on sessions facilitated by: Richard Ngarigo, and Edwin Sang

Workshop Slides:

Day 1: Social Determinants: Theory and Data

Day 2: Machine learning and analyses of social determinants

Day 3: Causal and multi-level models and social determinants

Day 4: Health disparities and algorithmic fairness

• Dr. Becky Genberg on her work with Ampath, HIV care and social determinants

• Recorded video on Data Equity Systems by Prof. Julia Stoyanovich (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5epgc8m8Ho&ab_channel=TheGovLab)

Further resources (papers corresponding to data used in hands-on activities):

Ruchman SG, Delong AK, Kamano JH, Bloomfield GS, Chrysanthopoulou SA, Fuster V, Horowitz CR, Kiptoo P, Matelong W, Mugo R, Naanyu V, Orango V, Pastakia SD, Valente TW, Hogan JW, Vedanthan R. Egocentric social network characteristics and cardiovascular risk among patients with hypertension or diabetes in western Kenya: a cross-sectional analysis from the BIGPIC trial. BMJ Open. 2021 Sep 2;11(9):e049610. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-049610. PMID: 34475172

Vedanthan R, Kamano JH, Lee H, Andama B, Bloomfield GS, DeLong AK, Edelman D, Finkelstein EA, Hogan JW, Horowitz CR, Manyara S, Menya D, Naanyu V, Pastakia SD, Valente TW, Wanyonyi CC, Fuster V. Bridging Income Generation with Group Integrated Care for cardiovascular risk reduction: Rationale and design of the BIGPIC study. Am Heart J. 2017 Jun;188:175-185. doi: 10.1016/j.ahj.2017.03.012. Epub 2017 Mar 23. PMID: 28577673