TCORS: Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations (CAsToR)

Summer Course & Scholarship Program: Simulation Modeling of Tobacco Use, Health Effects and Policy Impacts

Simulation Modeling of Tobacco Use, Health Effects and Policy Impacts (EPID 730)

The Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations (CAsToR), in collaboration with the University of Michigan Summer Session in Epidemiology, sponsors a short summer course on tobacco simulation modeling. The course will introduce students to the use of simulation modeling to assess the burden of tobacco use on health, and project the impact of tobacco control interventions and regulations on use patterns and downstream health effects. The course will provide an overview of state transition and dynamical system models, their application in public health and policy making, and the use of simulation modeling in tobacco control. Students will learn about the main tobacco simulation models in the literature, become familiar with state transition and dynamical system models, and develop and implement their own smoking simulation models in the R statistical software or Excel. The course will be a combination of lectures by leading experts in the field, modeling lectures, and hands-on lab sessions.

The one-week course is held annually in July and is online and synchronous. A sample syllabus is available here. The course is taught by CAsToR investigators Rafael Meza and Jihyoun Jeon.

Scholarship Program

Each year, CAsToR offers a limited number of scholarships for participation in EPID 730. In addition, scholarships can fund participation in Complex Systems Modeling for Public Health Research (EPID 793), an introductory course on modeling and public health research, which is offered two weeks prior to EPID 730. Scholarships are available for EPID 793 only for those who are also applying for scholarships for EPID 730.

Additional details on both courses can be found here.

The RFA for scholarships is released each year in February or March with a due date in April, and the application requires a one-page statement and current CV.