Optimization for Interventions

Our goal is to help maximize the impact of behavioral and biobehavioral interventions for treatment and prevention.  This course focuses on research study frameworks, designs and approaches to create, optimize and then evaluate these interventions.  Students will learn how to apply engineering-inspired concept of optimization to the study of behavioral, biobehavioral and biomedical interventions across public health fields.  The course will be grounded in the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) framework.  Under the optimization phase of the MOST framework, the course will introduce experimental designs with an emphasis on sequential, multiple assignment randomized trial (SMART) which is a way to develop high-quality adaptive interventions.   Micro-randomized Trails which are referred to as MRTs, a way to develop mHealth Just-in-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs) also will be covered. Students will understand the fundamentals of these designs, when to apply these designs and start to critically evaluate these designs.  Students will accomplish these goals by examination of recently published optimization studies and will outline their own studies using these designs.