The Biostatistics Center (BSC) https://biostatcenter.gwu.edu at George Washington University’s (GW) Milken Institute http://publichealth.gwu.edu School of Public Health (SPH), recently launched three projects to design, conduct, analyze, and report on COVID-19 studies.
The first project funded by the State of North Carolina aims to learn more about COVID-19 by studying patients in five healthcare systems throughout the state with funding for the project to be nearly $1 million. BSC will serve as the data coordinating center for the project and will work with investigators at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
The second project funded by CDC https://www.cdc.gov will expand COVID-19 surveys to multiple states, including Maryland, North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Vysnova is the prime awardee for the CDC grant and BSC has a subcontract valued at more than $1 million a year for two years.
BSC will serve as the data coordinating center for the study of patients at healthcare systems operated by the University of Maryland, MedStar Health, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Atrium Health in North Carolina, Tulane University, and the University of Mississippi. BSC will combine and evaluate EHRs and serologic and syndromic testing data for up to 500,000 participants in the study.
The third project funded by NIH with support from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, https://www.nichd.nih.gov will enable BSC to join researchers across the country to better understand how COVID-19 affects pregnancy outcomes.
Researchers part of the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Network https://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/supported/mfmu will track about 1,000 to 2,000 pregnant women with COVID-19 infections and continue to monitor them for six weeks after they have given birth. BSC will serve as the data coordinating center for the project and will assist with study design, conduct all the statistical analyses, as well as collect data from 12 clinical centers.
In addition, the researchers will analyze the medical records of 24,000 women to evaluate whether changes to healthcare delivery and resource re-allocation as a result of the pandemic, have led to higher rates of pregnancy complications and cesarean deliveries.The project will also look to see if mothers infected with the virus can transmit it to their fetus.
“This study will address whether infection with COVID-19 during pregnancy increases complications and death compared to pregnant without infection”, said Rebecca Clifton, PhD, Associate Research Professor Epidemiology at Milken Institute SPH, and the PI for the data coordinating center on the project.”