2022 Strengthening Causal Inference in Behavioral Obesity Research

About this Course

This is the video and material archive of the 2022 Strengthening Causal Inference in Behavioral Obesity Research Short Course supported by NIH NHLBI grant R25HL124208.

Identifying causal relations is fundamental to understanding which social and behavioral factors cause variations in obesity, which is a field of both intervention and prevention. Discussions of causation are often limited to a dichotomy of ordinary association tests versus randomized controlled trials, yet there are many other considerations and techniques available to advance causal understanding of obesity. Effectively employing techniques to produce, evaluate, and select among intervention and prevention strategies, as well as to understanding obesity's root causes, requires understanding of underlying principles to tailor approaches to specific and varying situations. Advances in behavioral obesity research require input from disciplines including statistics, economics, psychology, epidemiology, mathematics, philosophy, behavior, genetics, and more.

This course includes four interactive, remote, synchronous sessions in conjunction with three weeks of engaging online material to provide key fundamental principles underlying a broad array of techniques, and experience in applying those principles and techniques through guided discussion of real examples in obesity research.

The learning objectives of this course are:

• To expose participants to methodologic instruction on techniques and case applications to advance understanding in causal inference in behavioral obesity research.
• To provide interactive discussions among participants and experts.
• To facilitate collaborations among scientists and methodologists working on obesity from different disciplines for informing judgments about causation to facilitate the most productive and informative work possible in the obesity field.