DSxHE does many wonderful and delicious things, but some of its greatest things will happen through the DSxHE Themes.
Themes come in all shapes and sizes (and anyone can apply to create and run a new theme!). In short they are bundles of activities around a common interest, some do events, some write academic pieces together, some run software projects.
We've soft launched 5 themes (Genomic Data Diversity, Infectious Diseases, Social Determinants of Health, Standards for Health Data Equity and Statistical Methods) and now we are looking to grow out each of these theme organising teams. This is where we need you.
In becoming a DSxHE organiser for one of the themes, in general, you commit to:
Contribute on average 2-3 hours a week
Attend a regular meeting for your theme
Be active on the DSxHE Slack (our mode of communication)
Keep your notes and documentation organised, up-to-date and clear on Notion (where we organise our work) so we can work as asynchronously as possible
We hope all organisers have a lot of fun, get to work with a global group of quite frankly spectacular people, learn lots about data science/health equity and community management, and truly feel a sense of ownership, autonomy and space for creativity, to lead their DSxHE theme onto great things.
Below is an overview of each theme and the contact details of the leads, so get in touch if any take your fancy! We are looking for teams of 4-5 per theme.
Genomic Data Diversity
This theme aims to source, curate, build and spread tools that make genomics as equitable as possible.
Organisers for this theme will: Source events from the theme's community (hackathons, data dives, curation sessions), help onboard new contributors to the community, find partners, disseminate new tools, support in structuring/curating/versioning tools in the theme.
Contact Maxine Mackintosh (maxine.mackintosh@genomicsengland.co.uk) and Marie Nugent (marie.nugent@genomicsengland.co.uk) if you are interested in joining the organising team. Check out this link for more details.
Infectious Diseases
This theme aims to highlight and explore how the risk of exposure to infectious pathogens and the outcome of subsequent disease is inextricably linked to the social environment and therefore driven by health inequities.
Contact Palwasha Khan (palwasha.khan@lshtm.ac.uk) if you are interested in joining the organising team. Check out this link for more details.
Social Determinants of Health
This theme aims to apply AI and Data Science to improve our understanding and direct action on the social determinants of health, to progress towards closing the “equity gap”.
Contact Alisha Davies (adavies@turing.ac.uk) if you are interested in joining the organising team. Check out this link for more details.
Standards
This theme aims to tackle biases in health data science through developing and sharing standards, guidelines and best practice principles.
Contact Xiao Liu (x.liu.8@bham.ac.uk) and Joe Alderman (j.e.alderman@bham.ac.uk) if you are interested in joining the organising team. Check out this link for more details.
Statistical Methods
This theme aims to improve our understanding of health inequalities and reduce disparities through the development of better statistical methods.
Organisers for this theme will help:
Arrange & host reading groups / lunch-and-learns / seminars
Produce a 'landscape' of researchers & groups working on relevant topics
Build connections between these researchers and the theme
Coordinate a (series of) workshop(s) to identify the 'grand challenges' in statistics for health equity
Contact Brieuc Lehmann (b.lehmann@ucl.ac.uk) if you are interested in joining the organising team. Check out this link for more details.