ENAR 2025 DataFest

We are seeking ENAR Student members, who are degree candidates at an accredited institution in any term during 2024-25 academic year to participate in the ENAR 2025 DataFest event. Student teams will work with a curated dataset from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to answer an important scientific question related to blood pressure control.

Up to four teams will be invited to present at the ENAR 2025 Spring Meeting. Each final four team will receive individual team member certificates, discounted Spring Meeting registration, and an invitation for a 20-minute presentation as part of the ENAR DataFest Invited Session. The team with the most outstanding final presentation will receive the ENAR DataFest Award, which includes an additional monetary prize.

We are also seeking volunteers to serve as mentors and judges. See below for more information!

Eligibility

To be eligible, a student team must include 1-4 individuals, who are all current ENAR members, degree candidates (master’s or doctoral level students) at an accredited institution in any term during 2024-25 academic year, and able to present their project at the ENAR Spring Meeting, March 23-26, 2025, in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Key Deadlines

Dec. 13: WebENAR | DataFest 2025 Information Session for Students and Mentors
Jan. 10: DataFest Team, Mentors and Judge Interest Forms Due!
Jan. 17: Student teams paired with a mentor.
Jan. 17 - Feb. 16: Project working window.
Feb. 17: DataFest Project Submission Form Due.
Feb. 24: Final 4 winners announced.
Mar 24: Final 4 teams present at ENAR 2025 Spring Meeting.

DataFest Project Summary

Teams will work with a curated dataset from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to answer an important scientific question related to blood pressure control. The statistical analysis should consider a problem, issue or policy question relevant to the problem statement.

Problem statement: Controlling blood pressure (BP) reduces the risk for cardiovascular disease. However, the prevalence of BP control (i.e., systolic BP < 140 and diastolic BP < 90) among US adults with hypertension has decreased since 2013. We invite teams to analyze publicly available data from US adults to help identify potential causes or correlates of worsening BP control among US adults with hypertension over the past decade, as this may allow for development of effective interventions to help control BP and prevent cardiovascular disease. The competition this year encourages the use of additional NHANES data.* Think creatively about additional NHANES data that you can merge with the existing data to evaluate blood pressure.

Data Description: Data from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) containing information about demographics, blood pressure levels, hypertension status, antihypertensive medication usage, and co-morbidities for a sample of 59,799 noninstitutionalized US adults collected between 1999 and 2020.

The data can be downloaded from GitHub or accessed via the cardioStatsUSA R package. For both the file and information about the R package, see https://github.com/jhs-hwg/cardioStatsUSA.

• Documentation: For a detailed description of all variables in the data, see https://jhs-hwg.github.io/cardioStatsUSA/reference/nhanes_data.html.
  
  
• Interactive exploration: A shiny application has been created to help explore hypertension statistics for US adults using these data. The application is available here: https://bcjaeger.shinyapps.io/nhanesShinyBP/
  
  
• For more details on the data and the shiny application, see the supporting paper https://doi.org/10.1161/hypertensionaha.123.20900.

*Accessing Additional NHANES data: We encourage teams to integrate additional NHANES data as needed to help pursue their research question. Currently, the data linked above includes NHANES cycles from 1999-2000 through 2017-2020. A new cycle was recently released (2021-2023), and data from this cycle could be used to investigate your team’s research question or provide a ‘testing’ set to evaluate whether your team could use cycles up to 2017-2020 to forecast BP control in the next cycle. Additional NHANES data can be downloaded directly from https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/.

Guidelines for DataFest Preparation

All required materials for ENAR DataFest must be received by the ENAR Business Office, including the electronic submission of the manuscript and video presentation through www.enar.org, by 11:59 p.m. ET February 17th, 2025. Only complete submissions that meet the eligibility requirements, follow the described guidelines, and are received by February 17th will be considered. Teams will submit a GitHub repository that includes

1. A maximum 5-page report with up to 2 figures and 2 tables
2. A 5-minute video presentation
3. Associated reproducible code base.

Guidelines Checklist

Please use the following Guidelines Checklist to confirm your submission is complete before submitting for participation in the ENAR DataFest. If you do not meet these criteria, your project may be disqualified. Out of respect for all teams, NO EXCEPTIONS to the eligibility criteria or submission deadlines will be made. Please read these details carefully and plan ahead! If you have questions about DataFest, please email enar@enar.org and include DataFest in the subject line.

To be considered complete:

Your submission should include:

• a manuscript submitted as pdf
• a maximum 5-minute video submitted as MP4
• a brief abstract (1200-character count max)
• a GitHub repository with a reproducible code
• Link or text describing your additional data source

A manuscript should include:

• a maximum of 25 lines per page, double spaced
• 1-inch margins
• 12-point font
• a maximum of 5 pages*
• a title page with a title, a brief abstract (1 paragraph in length) and keywords
• References typed using the style of the Biometrics journal
• Tables and figures at the end of manuscript
• no more than FOUR (4) tables and/or figures

*Title page, up to 2 tables and 2 figures and references are NOT included in the 5-page limit.

A manuscript should NOT include:

• supplemental materials

A video submission should be no longer than 5 minutes and include:

• a problem statement
• a statistical analysis overview
• key results
• conclusion

Review Criteria

• Clarity of research purpose and motivation by a relevant problem.
• Innovative approach that is relevant to the motivating question.
• Scientifically meaningful results are clearly explained and/or illustrated.
• Organization of the article and presentation is clear and concise.

Submission of DataFest Projects

Submission of DataFest Projects
You are required to complete Steps 1 & 2 by each respective deadline.

STEP 1: Electronic Submission of Student Interest Form.
The Student Interest Form must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. EST January 10, 2025.

STEP 2: Electronic Submission of DataFest Project Submission Form.*
All projects and supporting documentation must be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. EST February 17th, 2025.
*Required: GitHub Repository (with reproducible code and report) AND Video Presentation

ENAR DataFest Submission Forms

Judge or Mentor Interest Form
We seek ENAR members who are either faculty or working professionals to serve as either DataFest judges or mentors.

• Judges will be tasked with scoring submitted project reports, consisting of a 5-minute video presentation and review of a reproducible codebase. Rubrics will be provided to guide the judging process. Judge interest forms are due by Friday, January 10, 2025.
• Mentors will be paired with an assigned team(s). Mentors will review the grading rubrics to gain a deeper understanding of the topics that each team will be assessed on. Mentors can serve as judges only for teams they do not mentor. Mentor interest forms are due by Friday, January 10, 2025.

Student Team Interest Form
We are seeking PhD and Masters students, who are interested in participating in the second annual ENAR DataFest. Student teams can be made up of 1-4 members. One member from your team should complete the DataFest Submission Form and include all member names, emails and affiliations. Student interest forms are due by Friday, January 10, 2025.

DataFest Project Submission Form
Please submit your projects using the form below. We request information on all student team members (max 4), a link to the reproducible code-base shared via GitHub, and a video submission or link to video submission consisting of the 5-minute DataFest project presentation. DataFest Project Submission forms are due by Monday, February 17, 2025.