“I look at who spends time with whom, what kind of interactions they have,” explained Danaher-Garcia. “What postures they exchange, what body contact they have.”
Her team discovered that two large groups of dolphins once separated by 100 miles actually came together and formed new friendships, a rarity in a world where territoriality and the fight for resources are king. The published findings caught the attention of media outlets like the New York Times, Science and Newsweek. Today, Danaher-Garcia is marking her first year as an Assistant Professor of Healthcare Data Analytics in the School of Healthcare Leadership. She finds a number of correlations between dolphins and what she teaches.
“There are a lot of assumptions in statistics that observations are independent,” she said. “And obviously, if individuals are interacting with each other, they're no longer independent. Their behaviors depend on the individuals around them. So, there are more complicated statistical models that deal with that. A lot of students are going to be looking at behaviors, learning outcomes, and issues that don’t fulfill many statistical assumptions.”
Danaher-Garcia has developed and is teaching three technical courses in the Master of Healthcare Data Analytics program, which began in September 2022. She sees her students thinking more critically, framing things in a more quantitative way, and not getting stuck when they hit obstacles.
“If they’re working on an assignment and it's something that wasn't explicitly taught in the textbook, they can still figure out, ‘How do I work around this problem?’” says Danaher-Garcia. “The great thing about data analytics is that there's no one right way to get to the solution.”
The beauty of the Healthcare Data Analytics program, she notes, is the blend of technical, leadership, interprofessionalism, and ethics courses – the very areas a healthcare system rests on.
“It’s not just, you are handed data. You have to work with the team to figure out what data need to be collected,” she says. “And then they need to understand why they're collecting it. Once you have results, you have to understand how to communicate back to them so that they can make effective decisions. So, it's the merger of the two sides. The technical and non-technical are what make our program specific to healthcare data analytics.”
Dr. Shuhan He says the program is lucky to have someone with Danaher-Garcia’s skills and expertise.