Coming Together Around COVID-19 Research in New Jersey

In the midst of the devastation and disruption of a global pandemic, faculty and staff across the Institute for Health have found new ways to come together and continue our important work. 

Centers and Cores quickly transitioned to telecommuting with video meetings via WebEx and Teams, and responded to the urgent need to understand and address COVID-19 concerns and challenges in the community. Among the numerous projects currently planned or underway at the Institute and its Centers are: 

• The Center for Health Services Research is planning studies on the intersecting COVID-19 and opioid epidemics. Among other topics, the studies will examine the risks and outcomes for COVID-19 infection in individuals with substance use disorders, as well as the considerable changes taking place in treatment processes and recovery residences.
• The iPHD project has a new priority, “Supporting New Jersey’s Response to the COVID-19 and other public health emergencies.” The Center for State Health Policy will convene a subcommittee to integrate the new priority into the project.

• Faculty in the Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science are working on several proposals related to COVID-19. Dr. Dan Horton is involved in the Rutgers COVID-19 Cohort Study, the nation’s largest prospective study of healthcare workers, as well as a number of related trials. Dr. Soko Setoguchi is leading NJACTS’s effort to create a comprehensive and longitudinal COVID-19 data repository from health records for clinical research.
• Dr. XinQi Dong and others at the Institute are pursuing studies related to nursing homes, including examining testing of staff and residents, care transitions, as well as the short- and long-term psychological consequences of COVID-19 in patients and others.

The #IFHTranslates Twitter campaign provides daily translations of official New Jersey COVID-19 updates in nine languages, including Spanish, Hindi, Urdu, Tagalog and Korean. Translations are provided by IFH research assistants and volunteers, and are shared on their Twitter accounts with language-specific hashtags. IFH also partners with the TV Asia network to provide updates for daily newscasts in Hindi and Gujarati.