Esmé Baan received second NRS Travel Grant
As a PhD candidate investigating asthma therapy in children, the NRS travel grant gave me the opportunity to visit the 35th International Conference on Pharmacoepidemiology & Therapeutic Risk Management held in Philadelphia.
The annual conference focuses on epidemiologic approaches to study the use, effectiveness, value and safety of pharmaceuticals. Amongst the speakers and attendees are pharmacists, statisticians, physicians, and epidemiologists. Therefore this conference was an ideal opportunity for me to learn more about methods to study asthma drugs.
Before the actual conference, pre-conference courses were given by experts from various fields. One atypical though very useful course I attended was on scientific writing; someone who used to work in law explained how you can write down complicated ideas as comprehensible as possible. Other courses were about analysis methods which were very useful as well.
During the actual conference I gave a talk about one of my own studies, which is about asthma drug utilization in children. In addition I presented another study on a poster. People asked me interesting questions and gave comments which I can use for the final analyses and writing of the manuscript.
Other studies presented at the congress were also about drug utilization studies which gave me inspiration for new studies. Additionally I attended a fascinating symposium about the problem of heterogeneity, which is an issue anyone working with multiple databases will come across.
In short, ICPE brought me new knowledge, exposure by presenting our data and helped me expand my professional network. For this I would like to thank the NRS for the grant and support.
Esmé Baan, M.D.
PhD student
Erasmus MC/Sophia Children’s Hospital
