Statistician - Statistical Analysis and Data management

Title : Statistician - Statistical Analysis and Data management

Location : Remote

Job Description :

Background : Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common chronic diseases in the U.S. with over 30 million people having the disease. It is also one of the costliest chronic diseases with direct costs of $245 billion in 2012. Individuals with diabetes are at an increased risk for acute and chronic complications such as macro vascular and micro vascular complications. Assessing trends of these complications in the population is important to both assess the on-going risk to the population with diabetes and to assess the effectiveness of diabetes care and risk factor control.

The primary objective is to provide services and deliverables with a focus on surveillance and statistical / geospatial analyses. The responsibility includes creating and maintaining a national diabetes surveillance system and related surveillance activities. Provide key expert advice and assistance in the analysis of surveillance data on diabetes, its risk factors, and its complications.

Obtain, assemble and format analytic data sets from a variety of complex data sources (including national and state surveys and registry data) that relate to trends in the prevalence, incidence, prevention, risk factors, and control of diabetes and its complications. These include administrative datasets, electronic health record systems, large national data sets such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES), National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), and Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). Create well-documented, standardized SAS datasets that assure timely access and appropriate use of data to produce estimates of diabetes surveillance indicators. Create the relational databases needed for SQL server feeds to the internet application.

Conduct statistical analyses and prepare statistical reports. Use advanced macros and a variety of statistical software (e.g., SAS, SUDAAN, R, GIS) to develop appropriate methods for graphing, tabulating, summarizing, interpreting and presenting data from complex survey data and other large databases. Create, modify, and document statistical and data management programs to create estimates of surveillance indicators. Resolve problems involving complex data management and analytic activities. Use statistical theory and methods to conduct statistical analyses of trends using appropriate software (e.g., SUDAAN, Joint Point, and SAS).

Use GIS software to map and analyze surveillance data at the state and county level.

Ensure surveillance data are of the highest quality. Verify accuracy of surveillance data on the beta test site of the internet application. Identify departures from trend in surveillance analyses requiring further exploration and explanation prior to public release.

Advise on the future development of the surveillance system and reports. Recommend changes to system requirements and reports to meet user needs. Provide high level of technical expertise and assistance in support of surveillance activities. Advise in the internet application development and design of the national diabetes statistics report.

Explore new data sources and surveillance indicators to fill informational gaps in diabetes surveillance.

Minimum Requirements :

• Knowledge of analytic data management including best practices, tools, and techniques is required.
• Knowledge of statistical methods and the ability to complete and interpret statistical analyses is required.
• Knowledge of statistical programming languages and statistical analysis software packages is required (SAS and SUDAAN, or R).
• Direct experience performing analytic data management and statistical analysis of administrative data and large, complex surveys is required.
• Knowledge of Geographic Information System (GIS) software and programming (e.g., Aeronautical Reconnaissance Coverage Geographic System-ArcGIS) is highly desirable as well as interactive data visualization tools (e.g., Tableau).

Additional Requirements : Moving forward, the team is focused on innovation, data modernization, and enhancing the application with more data, more features, and more efficiency. Skills that would be highly desirable are below :