Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust (MLW) in conjunction with College of Medicine (CoM) recently conducted a short course in statistics and R language for statistical computing. The training ran from 29 October to 2 November at the Research Support Centre at CoM. The training drew participants from both MLW and COM and was targeted at those that work on epidemiological studies and are involved in data analysis. The training modules were delivered by Marc Henrion, Augustine Choko, James Chirombo, McEwen Khundi and Victor Chikwapulo.

Participants from MLW included Wellcome Trust PhD and MSc fellows at different stages of their fellowships, staff from clinical studies as well as from the data department. From CoM, both academic, study and data management staff were in attendance. The training was a mix of basic statistical concepts and hands-on exercise using R. It covered the following areas: an introduction to R, review of statistical principles, study design, statistical hypothesis testing and basic regression modelling.

There was a high demand for the training with over 100 people signing up for the course against space availability of 40. Due to this high demand, there are plans to hold the training again in 2019 and to make it a regular on MLW’s training calendar in the coming years.

The course was organised by the Statistical Support Unit at MLW and had organisational support from the Training Committee at MLW and the Research Support Centre at CoM.