Causal Mediation Analysis Training: Methods and Applications Using Health Data

The Causal Mediation Analysis Training is a 3-day intensive boot camp of seminars and hands-on analytical sessions to provide an overview of concepts, data analysis methods used to investigate mediating mechanisms.

This three-day intensive course will cover some of the recent developments in causal mediation analysis and provide practical tools to implement these techniques and assess the mechanisms and pathways by which causal effects operate. Led by a team of experts in causal mediation techniques at Columbia University, this course will integrate lectures and discussion with hands-on computer lab sessions using R, SAS, SPSS and Stata. The course will cover the relationship between traditional methods for mediation in environmental health, epidemiology, and the social sciences and new methods in causal inference using a wide variety of examples to illustrate the techniques and approaches.

We will discuss:

1. when the standard approaches to mediation analysis are valid for dichotomous, continuous, and time-to-event outcomes, 
2. using ideas from causal inference and natural direct and indirect effects, alternative mediation analysis techniques (parametric and semiparametric) when the standard approaches will not work, 
3. the no-confounding assumptions needed for these techniques and sensitivity analyses to assess the impact of violation of these assumptions, and 
4. how such mediation analysis approaches can be extended in the presence of multiple mediators.

There is a limited capacity for the Boot Camp. Investigators at all career stages are welcome to attend, and we particularly encourage trainees and early-stage investigators to participate.

Prerequisites/Requirements: Each participant must be familiar with linear and logistic regression. A laptop is not required for this training. All hands-on data analysis sessions will be done in a computer lab.

More information:

• Paid registration required through RegFox: https://columbia-workshops.regfox.com/2019-causal-mediation-analysis
• More information about training details, registration deadlines, fees, and logistics can be found on our website at https://www.mailman.columbia.edu/causal-mediation
• Email us at Columbia.CMA@gmail.com