VERDI Resources

This repository serves as a hub for the VERDI Consortium’s preparedness materials, providing other researchers, healthcare professionals and policymakers with adaptable resources that can be freely used to rapidly initiate observational research studies in children and pregnant women in the event of a new outbreak.

 

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Protocols and study materials
Online databases
Modelling resources
Participatory research tools

Protocols and other study materials

Protocol for household transmission study

Household transmission studies can be used to assess the transmissibility of a pathogen and risk factors for infection and disease, including the effects of vaccination. This document is a generalisable protocol describing the conduct of a household transmission study. It outlines research approaches which could be used in such a study, including enrolment, data collection, and ethics and governance procedures.
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Protocol for perpetual observational study (POS) of pregnant women accessing healthcare in Europe

A perpetual observational study (POS) is a prospective observational study that continuously enrols participants with a shared characteristic, for example a particular infection or condition or, in this case, pregnant women. Data are collected mainly through routine care, and can inform the design of future trials and observational studies, for example by identifying sites seeing a high number of patients with the condition of interest or with patients with particular characteristics. This protocol describes how to conduct a POS to collect aggregated site-level data describing site characteristics, the number and characteristics of patients seen, and point prevalence surveys of vaccination uptake and infections. It is designed to be adaptable to different types of maternal and child health services.
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Umbrella Protocol for Qualitative Research in Infectious Disease Outbreaks

Qualitative studies provide valuable insights into people’s experiences of outbreaks, and the ways they are described in news and social media. This Qualitative Umbrella Protocol provides a standardised template for designing and carrying out studies involving focus group discussion, semi-structured interviews, participatory photography, and analyses of news and social media during an outbreak, including considerations specific to pregnant women and children. The protocol is accompanied by several standard operating procedures (SOPs) providing further guidance on specific aspects of the research.
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Access related publication

VERDI-ISARIC mpox case report form

Members of VERDI convened a Working Group to work with ISARIC (the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium) to enhance the applicability of the existing ISARIC mpox case report form (CRF) to data collection on children and pregnant women. The CRF, including data fields on age-appropriate symptoms and pregnancy complications and outcomes, is available through ISARIC’s BioResearch Integrated Data tool GEnerator (BRIDGE).
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Online databases

VERDI Metadata Dictionary

This page gives a comprehensive overview of the quantitative studies of COVID-19 and mpox which are part of VERDI. It includes details of the study designs, settings, populations included and data collected.
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Central Data Repository (CDR)

The CDR was developed by the Cohort Coordination Board (CCB) as part of VERDI. Hosted on the CCB website, it provides a publicly accessible online database of clinical research studies targeting infectious diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential in Europe. The CDR will continue to be updated, with new studies added to reflect new threats and epidemiological scenarios.
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VERDI Pregnancy Research Toolkit

This toolkit brings together resources developed in VERDI and externally to provide guidance for researchers on conducting research in pregnant populations during outbreaks. It includes research study tools and resources (including guidance on into research study tools; data sources and biobanks; analysis and modelling considerations; ethics and regulatory frameworks; dissemination and communication tools), information on relevant training opportunities, and details of pregnancy-related research networks.
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Modelling resources

Participatory research tools