Assessing Bias in Randomized and Non-Randomized Studies

Sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

PI: Tianjing Li (1R13HS027701)

When: July 21-22, 2022

Where: In-person at the NEW Anschutz Health Sciences Building
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
1635 Aurora Ct, Aurora, Colorado 80045, USA

Hotel: the Hyatt House Denver/Aurora is a 5-minute walk from the Anschutz Health Sciences Building.

Workshop description: This intensive, 2-day workshop will introduce three newly developed tools for assessing the risk of bias:

Version 2 of the Cochrane tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized controlled trials (RCTs),
ROBINS-I tool for assessing risk of bias in non-randomized studies of interventions (NRSI), and
ROBINS-E tool for assessing risk of bias in non-randomized studies of exposure

View Full Program Here

Workshop objectives:

Understand the empirical and theoretical evidence for bias in RCTs, NRSI, and non-randomized studies of exposure
Understand the types of bias that can undermine the internal validity of RCT, NRSI, and non-randomized studies of exposure
Be able to use version 2 of the Cochrane tool to assess risk of bias in RCTs
Be able to use the ROBINS-I tool to assess risk of bias in NRSI

Registration: https://medschool.cuanschutz.edu/ophthalmology/about-us/conferences-and-events/workshop-assessing-bias-in-randomized-and-non-randomized-studies
The registration fee is $99 for students, residents, and trainees; and $249 for professionals.
Deadline: online registration July 11; in-person registration accepted on-site

Diversity travel grants:
Congratulations to the six awardees, who will receive $600 plus waived registration to attend the conference:
Annemeri Livinalli
Meisser Madera
Eugenia Opuda
Ana Beatriz Pizarro
Tamika Rhodes
Sarah Tanveer

Make a weekend of it! Things to do:
https://do303.com/events/2022/07/22
https://www.denver.org/blog/post/event-planning-guide/
DenverSummer2022
https://10times.com/art-fest-denver

Workshop faculty:

Dr. Julian Higgins is Professor of Evidence Synthesis in the Population Health Sciences department of Bristol Medical School, where he leads the Bristol Appraisal and Review of Research group. Wide-ranging research interests span all areas of systematic review and meta-analysis. Dr. Higgins has co-authored more than 60 applied systematic reviews and over 150 papers on methodology. Among his methods contributions are: a Bayesian approach to network meta-analysis; the I-squared statistic to quantify inconsistency across studies in a meta-analysis; simple prediction intervals for random-effects meta-analysis; a general framework for individual participant data meta-analysis; a library of prior distributions for between-study variation in a meta-analysis; and risk-of-bias assessment tools for clinical trials and other study designs.

Dr. Higgins was a founding trustee and is a past President of the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology. He has long been an active contributor to Cochrane, and is a former member of Cochrane's Steering Group, Editorial Board and Scientific Committee. He is currently co-convenor of the Cochrane Bias Methods Group and has co-edited the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions since 2003. He is also co-author of the Wiley 2009 textbook Introduction to Meta-analysis. He has more than 300 publications, which have attracted more than 250,000 citations. With a Google Scholar H-index over 136, Julian has been named as a Highly Cited Researcher each year since 2015.

Dr. Jonathan Sterne is Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Bristol UK and Director of Health Data Research UK South-West. Dr. Sterne has longstanding interest in methodology for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and methodology for epidemiology and health services research, in particular related to causal inference from observational data. He led development of the ROBINS-I tool for assessing risk of bias in non-randomized studies of interventions and version 2 of the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool (RoB 2) for randomized trials. As co-lead for the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing UK COVID-19 National Core Study, he leads a large team working on linked whole-population electronic health record data held in Trusted Research Environments.

Dr. Tianjing Li is Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Epidemiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. The goal of Dr. Li’s research is to develop, evaluate, and disseminate methods for comparing healthcare interventions and to provide trust-worthy evidence for decision-making. Dr. Li has worked with Cochrane for 17 years, including serving as the Associate Director for Cochrane US from 2012 to 2018, as Coordinating Editor for Cochrane Eyes and Vision, the PI of the Cochrane Eyes and Vision US Project, a co-convener for the Cochrane Comparing Multiple Interventions Methods Group, and an executive member of the Cochrane Methods Board. She is an Associate Scientific Editor for the 2^nd edition of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and was the 2019 recipient of Cochrane’s Anne Anderson Award. She contributed to the development of the version 2 of the Cochrane risk of bias assessment tool (RoB 2) for randomized trials. Outside of Cochrane, Dr. Li serves as an Editor-in-Chief for the journal Trials, a Statistical Editor for Annals of Internal Medicine, the Review Editor for JAMA Ophthalmology, a Section Editor for book Principles and Practice of Clinical Trials, an Author and Editor for Textbook of Epidemiology (2^nd edition), among others. She is an elected member to the Society for Research Synthesis Methodology where she serves as the President-Elect and received its inaugural Early Career Award in 2016.

Dr. Matthew Page is a Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Head of the Methods in Evidence Synthesis Unit in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. His research aims to improve the credibility of syntheses of health and medical research. He has led many studies investigating the transparency, reproducibility, and risk of bias in systematic reviews and the studies they include, and has developed methods to address these issues. He co-led the PRISMA 2020 statement for systematic reviews and was a member of the core group who developed the RoB 2 tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized trials. He was an associate scientific editor for the 2nd edition of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. Matthew's expertise has been recognized in leadership and editorial appointments at organizations and journals focusing on methods for evidence synthesis, including co-convenor of the Cochrane Bias Methods Group, and member of the editorial board for the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology and PLOS Medicine.

Dr. Jelena Savović is a Senior Lecturer in Evidence Synthesis at the Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol and Evidence Team Lead at the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration West. Dr. Savović has a degree in Pharmacy the University of Belgrade in Serbia, and a PhD in medicinal chemistry from the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology at the University of Bath, UK. She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship in population health and health of the public from the UK Medical Research Council and completed the MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London. Dr. Savović co-led or contributed to the development of several risk of bias assessment tools: for randomized trials (RoB2), non-randomized studies of interventions (ROBINS-I) and for systematic reviews (ROBIS). Her empirical work exploring the sources of bias in randomized trials informed the development of the Cochrane risk of bias tool and the revised RoB2 tool. She also authored many applied systematic reviews in various clinical, public health and health services research topics.