LA BioMed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
and
UCLA Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute


Biostatistics Resources on this Campus


General Information for the LABioMed/Harbor-UCLA Campus

This document describes what biostatistics resources are available on the Harbor-UCLA campus. Additional information is available at http://research.LABioMed.org/Biostat.

A full-time biostatistician is partially supported by the NIH for the Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) activities, and partially supported by LABioMed.

The latter institutional support includes consulting for all LABioMed employees, review of, and/or advice on non-CTSI studies submitted to external funding agencies, the IRB, the Research Committee, and the Animal Committee. The intention of the consulting for LABioMed investigators is to develop well-designed research proposals with appropriate analysis plans and to provide advice and limited, ad-hoc analyses.

The biostatistician can also be included and funded as a co-investigator on specific studies to provide more extensive or complete biostatistical support for those studies, or to increase biostatistical priority for the study. Analyses for studies for which the biostatistician is specifically funded, which includes CTSI studies and co-investigator studies, and proposal development take priority over analyses for other studies.

The NIH requires that studies performed in the CTSI meet their statistical standards. The biostatistician assists investigators in their design and analysis plan, and reviews all proposals that are submitted to the CTSI, as a member of it's Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). Any statistical comments or concerns or suggestions from the SAC to an investigator can be resolved by consulting the biostatistician, or could be avoided by consulting before submission. The purpose of the comments is to have a rigorous study that will stand up to scientific scrutiny. If a statistical comment seems unwarrented, then either the biostatistician or the investigator misunderstands something, and so probably someone on other review boards will too eventually unless it is resolved.

The biostatistician can perform analyses for CTSI studies, typically up to 40 hours for any single study. Studies that require more extensive analyses may not have priority for the additional time required, and should include the biostatistician as a co-investigator when submitting to the funding agency to increase priority. For other studies, the biostatistician may strongly suggest that he or another colleague perform or oversee some analyses that are more complex than an investigator may realize.

Biostatistician (through August 31, 2012; Contact 222-2503 after):

Peter D Christenson, PhD
Phone: 310-222-1874
E-mail: PChristenson <at> LABioMed <dot> org
Office: Martin Building, AKA RB-1, Room 248, 2nd Floor, opposite end of bldg from elevators
Mailing Address: LABioMed at Harbor-UCLA, 1124 W Carson Street, RB-1, Torrance, CA 90501


Biostatistics consulting:


Education, Do-It-Yourself, Fellows/Students:

Short Courses:
Two 6-session courses are offered each year: a basic biostatistics course and an advanced biostatistics Case Studies journal club-style course. Both are focused on the logic and scientific inference of statistical methods, not mathematical details. See the courselist at http://research.LABioMed.org/Biostat for previous course material.

To support the mentoring of students and fellows, the biostatistician provides in-depth collaboration on their research studies. The fellows or students will need to perform all of the analyses, but the biostatistician can guide every step of the process, and oversees and advises them on design, software, analysis, interpretation, and publication. The goal is self-reliance for at least basic standard analyses.


Software:

The institution does not have it's own site license or vendor volume agreement for statistical software.
Investigators can obtain software by: