Cohort development for assessing health disparities

Extending a Jamaican cohort to facilitate research addressing health disparities among African descent populations.

Fifty percent of Non-Hispanic Black immigrants in the United States (US) originate from the Caribbean. Thus the health of US and Caribbean populations are closely intertwined due to both regional proximity and the high volume of Caribbean immigration. African-descent populations in the US and the Caribbean also share disease burden.

Although the National Institutes of Health has invested in studying US minority/immigrant populations, comparisons with Caribbean cohorts are needed to untangle the effect of biological, environmental, behavioural, and cultural health care system determinants of CVD and cancer risk and outcomes.

The goal of this work is to repurpose and expand an existing Caribbean-based survey into a robust longitudinal cohort that will support US-Caribbean research to facilitate the identification of health disparities in African-descent populations. The study will generate data and biospecimen collections, harmonized with equivalent US cohorts.

My involvement in this Jamaican cohort is primarily to maintain an online data handling infrastructure for the new cohort (we will be using REDCap) with HIPAA and GDPR compliance.