The COVID-19 Community Research Partnership: Objectives, Study Design, Baseline Recruitment, and Retention

  1. The COVID-19 Community Research Partnership
  2. John Sanders

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Abstract

The COVID-19 Community Research Partnership (CCRP) is a multisite surveillance platform designed to characterize the epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This manuscript describes the CCRP study design and methodology. The CCRP includes two prospective cohorts, one with six health systems in the mid-Atlantic and southern United States, and the other with six health systems in North Carolina. With enrollment beginning April 2020, sites invited persons within their healthcare systems as well as community members to participate in daily surveillance for symptoms of COVID-like illnesses, testing and risk behaviors. Participants with electronic health records were also asked to volunteer data access. Subsets of participants, representative of the general population and including oversampling of populations of interest, were selected for repeated at home serology testing. By October 2021, 65,739 participants (62,261 adult and 3,478 pediatric) were enrolled with 89% providing syndromic data, 74% providing EHR data, and 70% participating in one of two serology sub-studies. An average of 62% of participants completed a daily survey at least once a week, and 55% of serology kits were returned. The CCRP provides rich regional epidemiologic data and opportunities to more fully characterize the risks and sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.09.22270272: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Daily Syndromic Surveillance and Supplemental Surveys: Following informed consent provided through secure web-based systems, participants completed a onetime enrollment questionnaire (Supplemental Figure 2) which was immediately followed by a survey questionnaire which collected basic demographics (age, sex, and race/ethnicity), address, and if they were a current healthcare worker (Supplemental Figure 3).
    IRB: The Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Wake Forest Baptist Health serves as the central or reliance IRB.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    The tips were returned by pre-addressed mail to our laboratory for further processing using a one of two lateral flow assays (LFA) detecting IgM and/or IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (Syntron, Syntron Bio Research Inc., Carlsbad, California, USA or Innovita, Beijing Innovita Biological Technology, China).
    IgG
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Sites had the option to host their own system using REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture), a software toolset and workflow methodology for electronic collection and management of data (8,9).
    REDCap
    suggested: (REDCap, RRID:SCR_003445)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    The CCRP design is participant-friendly and embraces modern technologies and practical methods to overcome limitations of more traditional studies. For these reasons, the CCRP provides a unique resource for generating evidence-based answers to questions about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the US. The CCRP has several limitations. First, the CCRP is not a population-based study and does not consist of a random sample from the populations in the health system catchment areas, so selection bias is likely. In part, this bias is due to the study requirement of having an active email address and certain recruitment methods that relied on access to mobile technology and web or cell connectivity. CCRP participants were overrepresented by older, female, and Non-Hispanic White groups, although serology cohorts were sampled to more closely represent the demographics of surrounding counties. The decision to participate and loss-to-follow up may also have varied by demographics. As such, results may not be generalizable to broader geographic areas or to populations with less access to healthcare or electronic communications. Second, the logistics of providing serology tests to participants in their homes proved challenging, and the selection strategy for testing and the test platform utilized differed between the National Coalition and the NC State Coalition. There were clear tradeoffs between selectively reduced participation from requiring participants to have a smartphone to report the te...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.09.22270272 on medRxiv