This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of health services research. Health services research is the discipline that measures the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve healthcare. These interventions can include changes to the organization, delivery and financing of health care, including the use of computers in healthcare and various healthcare policies. Common outcome measures in health services research include (but are not limited to) patient safety, healthcare quality, healthcare utilization, and cost. Specific topics to be covered in this course include: refining your research question, choosing a study design, minimizing bias and confounding, selecting data sources, optimizing measurement, and more. There will also be a component of the course that explores how to present your ideas and iteratively refine your work, based on feedback from peers and reviewers. This course includes both lectures and interactive group discussions. Students will be able to apply the methods learned in this course to their masters’ research projects.