Program Aims

APHREA-DST works to accelerate public health research and impact, by establishing new multi-tiered training programs in public health data science in Eastern Africa. 

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APHREA-DST is a partnership between Columbia University (USA), Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia), and University of Nairobi (Kenya).  APHREA-DST is supported by the NIH Common Fund and is part of the "Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa," known as the DS-I Africa program.

New MS Degree programs

Hands-on Research Immersion

The development of new MS in Public Health Data Science degree programs is underway at Addis Ababa University and University of Nairobi.  These context-specific MS programs are designed to be sustainable well beyond the funding period.

Faculty Development

Each year, early and mid-career Faculty Scholars from Addis Ababa University and University of Nairobi are matched with a Faculty Mentor from one of our three partner institutions.  Mentor matches are made based on the public health data science interests of the Faculty Scholar.  Programming includes a week-long training at Columbia University and ongoing mentor-mentee communication over the course of the year.

Short Term Training

The short-term training program is structured around targeted short courses and workshops for a wide spectrum of trainees, including faculty, students, and professionals working in the governmental, non-governmental, and private sector.

All of APHREA-DST's training programs will leverage ongoing research projects led by team members and affiliated partners on environmental health, exposure assessment, remote satellite data, occupational exposures, climate change, infectious diseases, health surveillance, and health system monitoring and evaluation.  These will be used as immersion opportunities to enable hands-on experience with new data science techniques for trainees.

Evaluation and Monitoring

Evaluation and monitoring will track the success of the training programs and of the trainees’ achievement of their development goals, successful completion of the research training, scientific presentations and publications, and the sustainability and growth of the MS degree programs.

Long-term & Regional Impacts

In Year 5, we will broaden the training program to the wider East Africa region through sharing of curricula and inviting trainees for engagement. We will also explore the feasibility of incorporating the courses we have developed into existing PhD curricula or creating new PhD programs in public health data science. Beyond the educational programs and collaborations, our project is designed to cultivate long-term regional collaboration, lifelong learning skills, and a supportive community of researchers committed to open science, algorithmic fairness, and “data science for good,” ultimately leading to better public health practice.

Technological advances have led to an unprecedented abundance of increasingly complex, voluminous, and multi-dimensional data on a wide range of health outcomes and their determinants. This new era of big data provides remarkable opportunities to advance scientific knowledge and address the most pressing health challenges. Researchers need new multidisciplinary skills to analyze data and extract its full value. The discipline of data science has emerged to answer this call, using a creative blend of machine learning techniques from computer science and informatics tools, and guided by fundamental principles in (bio)statistics and mathematics both broadly and within the African context.

Stakeholder and Data Partners

APHREA-DST is strengthened by ties to ongoing research projects, and support from stakeholders working in the fields of data science and public health.

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