Foundational Data Science Training for Health Equity Researchers at Minority Serving Institutions: A SoRDS Event

Contemporary research, particularly when addressing the most significant transdisciplinary research challenges, cannot effectively be done without a range of skills relating to data management, data analysis, and cyberinfrastructure (CI). These data and CI skills are common to all disciplines that conduct data-centric research. Research Data Science acts as a vital component of the scientific process. In a grassroots attempt to address this gap, the CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science (SoRDS) was founded in 2016 to provide instruction on foundational data science and open research concepts to early career researchers in low and middle-income countries. This partnership between international collaborators has since 2016 provided this training to over 1000 early career researchers in 24 events in 10 countries worldwide. The most recent event was held at Georgia Institute of Technology and focused on health equity and included researchers from minority-serving institutions in the southeast United States. This paper covers the background of the SoRDS project along with organization and curriculum details. It also covers the transition of the events from a non-domain-centric curriculum to spotlighting biological and social health equity data and what we learned to make future health-related events more engaging and valuable to the attendees. It also looks toward future events that will serve international students studying health informatics and other data-centric disciplines.

当代研究，尤其是在应对最重要的跨学科研究挑战时，如果没有一系列与数据管理、数据分析和网络基础设施（CI）相关的技能，是无法有效开展的。这些数据和CI技能对于所有进行以数据为中心的研究的学科都是通用的。研究数据科学是科学过程的一个重要组成部分。为了从基层层面弥补这一差距，研究数据科学国际科技数据委员会 - 科研数据联盟学院（CODATA - RDA Schools of Research Data Science，SoRDS）于2016年成立，旨在为中低收入国家的早期职业研究人员提供基础数据科学和开放研究概念方面的指导。自2016年以来，国际合作者之间的这种伙伴关系已在全球10个国家举办了24次活动，为1000多名早期职业研究人员提供了此类培训。最近一次活动在佐治亚理工学院举行，重点关注健康公平问题，参与者包括来自美国东南部为少数族裔服务的机构的研究人员。本文涵盖了SoRDS项目的背景以及组织和课程细节。它还涉及活动从非以领域为中心的课程向聚焦生物和社会健康公平数据的转变，以及我们为使未来与健康相关的活动对参与者更具吸引力和更有价值所学到的经验。它还展望了未来将为学习健康信息学和其他以数据为中心的学科的国际学生服务的活动。