West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute: Improving Health through Partnerships and Transformative Research

Since the emergence of the novel coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) in the United States, more than 33 million cases have been confirmed, and the death toll has climbed to over 600,000 persons. The Institutional Development Award Program (IDeA) Clinical and Translational Research Centers (CTRs) are located in diverse areas of the US, serving rural populations as well as other underserved groups, including Native Americans, Hispanic individuals, and persons of color. Many states served by IDeA-CTRs have been among those hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) has been established by the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H) in partnership with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) as a centralized national data resource for the study of COVID- 19. Over the past year, the 8 IDeA-CTRs participating in National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) have contributed electronic health record (EHR) data on more than 175,000 individuals infected with SARS-COV-2. IDeA-CTR investigators have led multiple N3C Domain Teams, participated in many data projects, and engaged more than 150 IDeA state investigators across the US. Moreover, N3C has served as a stimulus for the IDeA CTRs to work as a highly collaborative network. IDeA CTRs are now well poised to build on this experience to enable inclusion of EHRs from additional areas of the United States, broaden engagement of diverse investigators throughout IDeA states, and most importantly, to drive science relevant to minority and underserved IDeA state populations with communication of results to those communities. We will accomplish these broad objectives through the following aims: Aim 1 - Build IDeA-CTR infrastructure to organize collaboration among IDeA CTRs for purposes of driving relevant science; AIM 2 - Expand IDeA-CTR data contributions to N3C, thereby, increasing representation of minority, rural, and other underserved populations in the N3C dataset; Aim 3 - Provide the necessary analytic support to conduct cutting-edge big data research using a range of techniques, including machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), to answer important research questions regarding impact of SARS-CoV-2 in IDeA states; and Aim 4 - Actively engage investigators in IDeA states to enable conduct of high quality COVID-19 data projects (through N3C) relevant to populations in their respective states while facilitating investigator development.