EBP260

EBP260: A statistics refresher and the COVID-19 vaccine

Clinicians have a professional obligation to promote public health, and during these difficult times, one of the most pressing public health concerns is to establish herd immunity to COVID-19. Yet many Americans -- clinicians and educators included -- continue to express reluctance to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. One source of that reluctance comes from misunderstandings about how clinical trials work, including how officials can be confident that the vaccines are indeed effective.

This course provides a brief refresher on statistical concepts, including how probability is used in sampling distributions, that are helpful for understanding how clinical trials work. The course then reviews what we know about the vaccines.

Format: This is a 1-hour course over Zoom.

Content Level: This course is appropriate for both entry-level and experienced practitioners and educators.

Learning objectives:

At the end of this presentation, participants will be able to:

Understand how probability is exploited in randomized trials.
Understand how randomized trials, at their best, can establish causality.
Explain how to interpret basic COVID-19 vaccine data, including how we know COVID-19 vaccines are over 90% effective at preventing COVID-19.

Instructor Bios

David Schelly, Ph.D., is a sociologist and assistant professor with expertise in evidence-based practice, social determinants of health, and social epidemiology. His autism research has focused on explaining why childhood autism cases tend to be diagnosed in geographic clusters, such that the “risk” of being diagnosed depends on where one’s parents live. In occupational therapy, Dr. Schelly has written about randomized controlled trial research design in terms of “clinical meaningfulness,” as well as the benefits of considering treatment efficacy using as-treated analyses.