Series of trainings comes to an end in May
EU Twinning Project “Strengthening the capacity of Serbia’s health sector for communicable disease surveillance” finishes the series of the training modules intended for Balkan epidemiologists and microbiologists. The training programme, which started in May 2024, has covered a broad thematic range from applied epidemiology, data collection, management and visualization tools to use of whole genome sequencing in surveillance and outbreak detection.
The last fifth training module will target public health epidemiologists and give them knowledge and skills for using R software in their day-to-day job. The R software offers numerous advantages to public health epidemiologists due to its powerful statistical capabilities, flexibility, data visualization capacities, big data handling, and active community support.
The training will include presentations, demos and exercises based on local datasets. The trainers from the THL Institute will also provide individual consultations in solving practical tasks.
The training will be conducted at the Institute of Public Health of Serbia “Dr Milan Jovanovic Batut” in Belgrade and it will be delivered in the English language.
Below is the tentative programme of the training:
Day 1 (20 May)
Part 1 (9:00–12:00)
Topics: Using R and RStudio, using projects and scripts, reading and exploring data, basic functions and plots
• Introduction and course procedures
• Demo: using R and RStudio
• Practising with prepared worksheet
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen
Coffee break (10:15-10:30)
• Demo: exploring data
• Practising
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Lunch 12.00 – 13.00
Part 2 (13:00–16:00)
Topics: Summaries, manipulating data sets, visualising data, troubleshooting, saving results
• Quiz
• Demo: manipulating data sets
• Practising with prepared worksheet
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Coffee break (14:15-14:30)
• Demo: troubleshooting and seeking help
• Wrap-up and reflection for Day 1
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Day 2 (21 May)
Part 1 (9:00 – 12:00)
Topics: Using R Markdown, long and wide table format, joins, data types, creating functions
• Introduction to Day 2
• Demo: using R Markdown
• Practising with prepared worksheet
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Coffee break (10:15-10:30)
• Demo: data types and functions in R
• Practising
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Lunch 12.00 – 13.00
Part 2 (13:00 – 16:00)
Topics: Repeating operations, creating reports
• Quiz
• Demo: repeating operations
• Practising with prepared worksheet
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Heidi Kuusinen, Henri Salo, Tuuli Kauppala
Coffee break (14:15-14:30)
• Demo: creating reports
• Wrap-up, reflection and feedback
Lecturers/facilitators: Jokke Häsä, Tuuli Kauppala
The participants are requested to fill out and submit an online registration form before 15 May 2025.