Volunteer at home to aid COVID research

Image by Vinzent Weinbeer from Pixabay

By Margaret Foster
Posted on March 04, 2021

Sometimes when you enroll in a health study, you have to drive to a hospital or clinic. Or you may have to roll up your sleeves and give blood.

What if there was a way to help science just by taking a daily survey at home?

If that sounds like the study for you, particularly during a pandemic, consider
joining MedStar Health’s COVID-19 Community Research Partnership, which launched in December. [Ed. Note: The author of this article is a participant in this health study.]

Once enrolled — a 15-minute process done entirely by computer — you will receive a daily email asking about your overall health, any symptoms of illness, any interactions with infected people, whether or not you wear a mask, saw a doctor or received a vaccine.

The 30-second survey can be completed on a computer or smartphone. Designed by Oracle, the survey is attractive and easy to use, and it’s okay to forget or skip a day.

Area residents needed

MedStar Health hopes to enroll 60,000 people in the D.C. and Baltimore metro areas. Researchers will crunch the data from daily surveys about residents’ health and vaccination status in hopes of tracking the virus’ spread in our area.

“This robust surveillance study will help us better understand the current state of the pandemic,” Dr. William S. Weintraub, director of Outcomes Research at the MedStar Heart & Vascular Institute and co-principal investigator on the study, said in a statement.

“We will be able to track the transmission of COVID-19, monitor changes in its spread, and measure the effectiveness of prevention strategies.”

The study will stay in touch with participants for about a year. Some volunteers can choose to take an at-home antibody test once a month for six months to see whether they have COVID-19 antibodies in their blood. There’s also a one-time supplemental survey about willingness to receive a vaccine.

MedStar researchers say it’s an easy way to help out during a public health emergency.

“There are plenty of folks who feel helpless [during the pandemic] and want to support our research. This takes less than 30 seconds a day,” said Kristen E. Miller, scientific director of the National Center for Human Factors in Healthcare at MedStar Health Research Institute, the study’s co-principal investigator. “It gives a nice opportunity for anyone in the community to participate.”

The Community Research Partnership is open to everyone in the area, whether they’ve been infected with the virus or not.

“Everyone is invited to the study,” Miller emphasized. “People might be hesitant if they don’t have symptoms or don’t ever leave their house. But we want to know folks’ experiences in our area…It’s a comprehensive evaluation of what people are experiencing.”

Because some demographic groups have suffered higher infection rates and morbidity rates, it’s essential to enroll a wide variety of people in the study, she said.

“We’re looking at different factors like race, gender and Zip code,” Miller said. “We need lots of participants because they’re the folks that will benefit [from the research]. There’s really been a focus on what’s been referred to as ‘special populations,’ but that’s really our community.”

So far more than 12,000 people in our area have “joined the fight,” Miller said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded this $25 million nationwide study, which includes six sites: MedStar Health, the University of Maryland, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Atrium Health, Tulane University and the University of Mississippi. No compensation is provided to participants.