July 6, 2021

More than 75 attendees from across the country gathered online to engage in a training at the sixth annual Urban Health Summer Institute, June 21-28. This was the second year that the Summer Institute has been hosted online. The Summer Institute held eight courses during the last full week of June. Attendees had the opportunity to gain skills in tools, evaluation and data analysis methods for public and urban health research. Since the inception of the Summer Institute in 2016, the Urban Health Collaborative has trained more than 400 participants through this program.

2021 courses included:

• Introduction to GIS
• GIS Spatial Analysis for Urban Health
• Introduction to R for Public Health Research
• Introduction to Multilevel Analysis for Urban Health Research
• Data Storytelling in Tableau: How to Convert Analytics into Insights
• Applied Policy and Program Evaluation for Urban Health
• Utilizing Electronic Health Records in Epidemiological Analysis
• Climate Change and Health in Cities: Evidence to Action

The course, Introduction to GIS, was co-sponsored by the Center for Public Health Practice (CPHP) at the Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health. The CPHP is home of the federally funded Mid-Atlantic Regional Public Health Training Center, a collaborative project with the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to increase the technical skills of the public health and health care workforce.

28 participants included students and staff from Dornsife School of Public Health, and other universities including: MIT, University of Penn, Notre Dame, UCLA, and many others. Professionals from across Philadelphia and the U.S. participated, from organizations like the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, National Institutes of Health, and Macklenburg County Public Health.

In the exit survey participants remarked on how much they learned in these condensed courses. Participants appreciated that the Summer Institute was offered online again and that the content allowed them to gain hands on experience. They also mentioned that the instructors took time to be available for questions and enjoyed the interactivity built into the online environment.