Capacity Building in Data Analysis: Participation of the TGHN LAC Honduras Team in the Course “Applied Statistics in Biomedical Research” by CIDEIM, Colombia
As part of the commitment to continuous training and the development of technical capacities in health research, members of the The Global Health Network Latin America and the Caribbean – Honduras Node team actively participated in the virtual course “Applied Statistics in Biomedical Research”, offered by the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Unit of the International Center for Medical Training and Research (CIDEIM), Cali, Colombia, during the first half of 2025.
This course is aimed at health professionals, early-career researchers, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and individuals involved in biomedical research who wish to strengthen their skills in statistics and data management. Delivered in a virtual format with a 96-hour duration, the course combines theoretical foundations with practical exercises using specialized software such as SPSS and STATA, promoting critical understanding of statistical results in scientific studies.
This training experience has been taken up by our team in two consecutive cohorts. In 2024, the epidemiologists from the Honduras Node participated; in the 2025-1 edition, it was the research assistants who completed the course as part of their professional development, strengthening their skills in statistical analysis and methodological support for ongoing projects.
Course structure and content
The course methodology combined synchronous sessions, practical workshops, discussion forums, and weekly guidance. Over four months, it comprehensively covered the fundamentals of descriptive and inferential statistics with an emphasis on biomedical applications. Topics included:
- Introduction to statistics and epidemiology
- Creation of tables and graphs
- Measures of central tendency and dispersion
- Sampling theory and sample size calculation
- Hypothesis testing and confidence interval estimates
- Comparison of independent and related samples
- Correlation and regression (linear and logistic)
- Survival analysis and association of categorical variables
Impact on the TGHN LAC Honduras Team
The team’s participation in this training has significantly contributed to the strengthening of local capacities in statistical analysis applied to health research. The knowledge acquired has been directly applied in the management and analysis of data from ongoing studies, promoting greater methodological rigor and critical capacity. Furthermore, this experience has helped consolidate skills that reinforce the role of the Honduras Node as a key actor in the generation of contextualized scientific evidence from and for the region.
