[gov3009-l] Applied Statistics - 3/23 - Laura Balzer

Hi everyone! This week at the Applied Statistics Workshop we will be welcoming *Laura Balzer*, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard University School of Public Health. She will be presenting work entitled *Targeted Learning in the SEARCH trial and HIV prevention in East Africa.* Please find the abstract below and on the website <http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009/presentations/3232016-panagiotis-panos-toulis-time-coming-soon> . As usual, we will meet in CGIS Knafel Room 354 from noon to 1:30pm, and lunch will be provided. See you all there! To view previous Applied Statistics presentations, please visit the website <http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/applied.stats.workshop-gov3009/videos>. -- Aaron Kaufman Title: Targeted Learning in the SEARCH trial and HIV prevention in East Africa Abstract: Evaluation of community-based interventions presents significant methodological challenges. In this talk, we describe the design and analysis of the SEARCH trial, an ongoing community randomized trial to evaluate the impact of early HIV diagnosis and immediate treatment with streamlined care in rural East Africa. We focus on 3 choices to optimize study power: adaptive pair-matching over complete randomization, targeting the sample average treatment effect instead of a population average parameter, and data-adaptive adjustment through a pre-specified targeted maximum likelihood estimator (TMLE). These choices are compared theoretically and with finite sample simulations. We demonstrate each choice improves efficiency relative to standard practice, while maintaining nominal confidence interval coverage.