The CITF Harmonization Initiative aims to maximize the value of CITF-funded studies and contribute to international COVID-19 research efforts. The centralized data access process will provide more researchers and modelers with access to publicly funded data, and harmonized datasets will provide all researchers, originally funded and others, with larger datasets by pooling across study-specific datasets, where appropriate. The initiative will also provide proof of principle and inform methodology for prospective harmonization of individual participant data from separate COVID-19 studies.
The harmonized data will include results from over 40 CITF-funded projects, which collect data from diverse Canadian cohorts and timepoints. The harmonized data will cover information about sociodemographic characteristics, COVID-19 infection history, vaccination history, and serological and cell-mediated immunity assay results. Potential research objectives include, for example:
- Defining the natural course of immune boosting events in individuals or different populations
- Linking symptomatic profiles to serology, infection, and vaccination in individuals or different populations
- Conducting measurement and methodology validation studies
- Identifying the effect of various population characteristics on vaccine uptake and infection burden of immune response
- Estimating seroreversion and vaccine effectiveness in individuals or different populations
- Comparing the contribution of cell-mediated immunity versus humoral immunity to protection against disease in different individuals or populations