Abstract
Statistical principles and methods are critical to the success of biomedical and translational research. However, it is difficult to track and evaluate the monetary value of a biostatistician to a medical school (SoM). Limited published data on this topic are available, especially comparing across SoMs. Using National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards and American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) faculty counts data (2010–2013), together with online information on biostatistics faculty from 119 institutions across the country, we demonstrated that the number of biostatistics faculty was significantly positively associated with the amount of NIH awards, both as a school total and on a per faculty basis, across various sizes of U.S. SoMs. Biostatisticians, as a profession, should be proactive in communicating and advocating the value of their work and their unique contribution to the long-term success of a biomedical research enterprise. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.
Highlights
Statistical principles have been increasingly accepted by the biomedical community as an integral part of sound research and biostatistical methods drive many health-related discoveries reported almost daily (Zelen 1983; Ellenberg 1990; Khatry 2004; Geller 2011; Davidian and Louis 2012; Davidian 2012)
In this paper we proposed a straightforward approach to evaluate the value of biostatisticians across over a hundred U.S medical schools (SoMs)
The study data were created by merging online databases on National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards and SoM faculty, together with information on biostatistics faculty identified through an extensive web search
Summary
Statistical principles have been increasingly accepted by the biomedical community as an integral part of sound research and biostatistical methods drive many health-related discoveries reported almost daily (Zelen 1983; Ellenberg 1990; Khatry 2004; Geller 2011; Davidian and Louis 2012; Davidian 2012). The study data were created by merging online databases on NIH awards and SoM faculty, together with information on biostatistics faculty identified through an extensive web search. The publicly available AAMC data tables listed the total faculty counts of major U.S medical schools and the number of three types of SoM faculty (basic science, clinical, and other) separately. For 17 remaining groups/units that provide biostatistical support (identified in steps 4 and 5 above), faculty webpages were reviewed and the number of doctoral level faculty with biostatistics/statistics degree and biostatistical research areas were counted. Among the 126 academic institutions with both NIH awards and AAMC faculty data for their SoMs, the numbers of biostatistics faculty were determined for 120 SoMs based on the online search.
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