Congratulations to Jeremy VanderDoes on his recent publication in Public Health!
The article, titled "Exploring the Syndemic Impact of COVID-19 and Mental Health on Health Services Utilization among the Adult Ontario Population," represents a collaborative effort with Kiran Saqib, Vivek Goel, and Zahid A. Butt from the School of Public Health Sciences, as well as Joel A. Dubin from the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science.
In this study, Jeremy played a crucial role in advising the team on various logistic regression models to assess how COVID-19 and associated stressors, such as anxiety and depression, influenced health services utilization for pre-existing chronic conditions within the general Ontario population. Given the vast dataset comprising millions of observations, the team had to meticulously construct their code to prevent server timeouts while exploring numerous potential models and stratifications.
The dataset for this research is securely stored in coded form at ICES. Due to data-sharing agreements, Jeremy did not have direct access to the dataset, which, while challenging, ultimately enhanced the study's accessibility for practitioners. Additionally, the team had to anticipate all potential questions prior to submission, as the data would no longer be accessible during the review process.
It was an interesting task to suggest models from data I could not examine. Clear communication, often with examples, was vital so that the ideas could be taken, applied, and verified. Putting your name on a paper means you stand by the results, and it was a new experience for that belief to be based solely on my ability to explain, rather than implement, a model.
About Jeremy VanderDoes
Jeremy VanderDoes is a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science and is currently one of the graduate consultants at SCSRU. Jeremy’s primary research includes change point analysis, time series and functional data.