The New Jersey SAS Users Group holds
meetings
three or four times a year for users of SAS products to meet and share ideas. Dues
for 2007 are $35 and include entry to all meetings. Non-members
will pay a $15 meeting
fee for each meeting.
Friday, 28Sep2007, 9:00a -at- Rutgers Labor Education
Center
New Brunswick, New Jersey
$15
meeting fee -or-
Payment of $35 (2007 dues) entitles members to free admission to all
meetings
Schedule
=========================
9:00-9:20
Registration, Gathering,
and Continental Breakfast
9:20-10:20
SAS Programming and Applications for the
Behavioral Risk Factor
Surveillance System (BRFSS)
Author: Susan
Garavaglia, Ph.D., MBA, Sr. Director, Outcomes Research, Medco Health
Solutions, Inc., Franklin Lakes, NJ
10:20-10:40
Break
10:40-11:40
SAS Consultant --- you want
to hire or to be
hired, Wei Zhang, Wu Consulting, Inc.
11:40-12:00
Random
Access and Closing Remarks
Meeting
Location
Rutgers
Labor
Education
Center (directions)
50 Labor Center Way
Rutgers, The State University of New
Jersey
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8553
(732) 932-9502
If you can get to Sears department store
on US
Route 1 southbound in New Brunswick, you
already know how to get the meeting location.
The Labor Education Center is directly behind the Sears store.
You
can access the center from the Sears parking lot.
SAS Programming and
Applications for the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
Susan Garavaglia, Ph.D., MBA, Sr. Director, Outcomes Research, Medco
Health Solutions, Inc., Franklin Lakes, NJ
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), an annual
self-reported telephone-based survey that is conducted and maintained
by a branch of the U. S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). It
was established in 1984 with 15 states participating and has been
conducted annually since then, with all 50 states currently
participating. In 2006, over 350,000 adults were interviewed and
included in the survey, making this survey the largest telephone survey
worldwide. The survey covers many aspects of health, including
chronic diseases, tobacco and alcohol use, nutrition and exercise,
preventive screening activity, and more. Although the survey is
most often used by the public health community, it has many
applications for other health care stakeholders, such as pharmaceutical
manufacturers, health insurers, and organizations that serve consumers.
The survey data, documentation, and SAS programs are available for
downloading from the CDC's BRFSS web site at no charge. All 23
years (1984-2006) are on-line. The SAS programs include
code to read the data either as a SAS transport file or an ASCII file
and SAS format statements (for more recent years). The data are
cross-sectional at the individual responder level, but may be used to
create national, regional, or state-level trends.
In order to successfully utilize the BRFSS data, the SAS developer
should understand how to use the documentation provided and have some
general knowledge of stratified sampling methods. In addition,
for the creation of longitudinal trends, it is convenient to create SAS
macros to extract the data and create a longitudinal data set.
Presentation Outline:
1. Introduction to the CDC's Behavioral
Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
2. How to access the data, documentation,
and programs
3. Overview of the data and naming
conventions
4. Overview of the sampling methodology
5. How to run basic statistics for a
single year
6. How to create a trend using a SAS macro
7. Limitations and caveats in using the
data
8. Additional applications
SAS Consultant --- you want to hire or to be hired
Wei Zhang, Wu Consulting, Inc.
This paper will discuss the following topics:
1. Current SAS consulting market and its
trend.
2. Skills people are looking as a SAS
consultant.
3. What should hiring manager be careful
about when selecting resumes and interviewing candidates.
4. Who are SAS consultants?
5. Off-shore opportunities for SAS
consultants.
