Our History

A History of STATCOM at the University of Michigan

The STATCOM chapter at the University of Michigan was founded in December 2006, after a visit from Amy Watkins of Purdue University, who was one of the original founders of the student-run pro-bono consulting group. Encouraged by Prof. Rod Little and Bhramar Mukherjee, Michael Elliott was the original faculty adviser, and Maria Larkin the first president. Our first project involved reviewing surveys and discussing sampling with Career Alliance, a non-profit workforce development organization in Flint, MI, to help them assess discrepancies between health care training opportunities and health care job openings in Genesee County. Since then STATCOM-UM has had eight student presidents, a faculty co-adviser (Cathie Spino), several faculty project advisers, and approximately 100 student volunteers from Biostatistics, Statistics, and Survey Methodology. We have worked on more than 60 projects for non-profits, primarily (but not exclusively) in the southeast Michigan area. Some projects are short, involving perhaps one or two meetings and discussions; others involve development of surveys or databases; and yet others involve full scale analysis and report writing.

Notable STATCOM Projects

  • Aim: 
    • Determine the extent of psychosocial risk for waitlisted transplant patients
    • Assess whether time on the transplant list impacts psychosocial risk factors
  • How: logistic regression
  • Results: Longer transplant wait times were associated with increased odds of worsening social support (OR=1.07, p = .04) and learning barriers (OR=1.16, p<.01).

  • Aim: Determine optimal locations for mobile food pantry services, prioritizing areas with low-income individuals to maximize impact of services.
  • How: Clustering analysis that prioritizes locations according to predefined criteria including local poverty, unemployment, and required travel time for clients.
  • Results: Created a visualization of current versus recommended locations and identified optimal locations for where pantry services should be scheduled.

Statistical Analysis of Caseload Size and its Association with Clinician Efficiency at The Children’s Center of Detroit

  • Aim: Assess associations between caseload and two measures of clinician efficiency: expected pay (how much each clinician earns for TCC each month from their appointments) and attendance rate.
  • How: Mixed Effects Model
  • Results:
    • For clinicians with caseloads less than 70, increasing a clinician’s caseload size leads to an increase in expected pay.
    • For clinicians with caseloads greater than 70, increasing a clinician’s caseload size leads to a decrease in expected pay.
    • Clinicians with higher attendance rates can handle a larger number of cases before their expected pay begins to drop.
    • Caseload size and attendance rate are inversely associated. Although the two variables are significantly associated, the association is weak.
    • Delivered report: “Statistical Analysis of Caseload Size and its Association with Clinician Efficiency at The Children’s Center of Detroit”

  • Aim: Determine if significant differences existed among SPH graduates in duration of job search, salary, and loan debt among different demographic categories including race/ethnicity and gender.
  • How: Cumulative incidence/event plotting and comprehensive data visualization
  • Results:

  • Aim: Design and facilitate an organization-wide survey, followed by data collection, input,and analysis
  • How: Qualtrics survey design and implementation, visualization of descriptive statistics
  • Results: