Teaching Bayesian Statistics in a Health Research Methodology Program

Despite the appeal of Bayesian methods in health research, they are not widely used. This is partly due to a lack of courses in Bayesian methods at an appropriate level for non-statisticians in health research. Teaching such a course can be challenging because most statisticians have been taught Bayesian methods using a mathematical approach, and this must be adapted in order to communicate with non-statisticians. We describe some of the examples we used whilst teaching a course in Bayesian methods to a group of health research methodologists.