Data Management and Biostatistics Core - Core Leader: Dr. Marcia C. Castro, HSPH ABSTRACT The Data Management and Biostatistics Core will provide comprehensive data management and statistical support for all Projects of the Amazonia ICEMR Program. Its functions include: guide study design; develop study protocols and metadata; ensure proper and safe data collection, management, and sharing; generate simple tabulations routinely and as requested by Project leaders; provide training as needed; and assist with statistical analysis. The Core will be instituted at Harvard University, integrated with the existing infrastructure of the partner institutions, and will work in seamless integration with Project leaders and researchers in study sites. The Core Leader will be Dr. Castro, directly supported by a part-time data manager & programmer based at Harvard, and by full-time data managers available in Peru and Brazil. Levering resources freely available to Harvard personnel, and thus at no cost to the ICEMR project, the Core will benefit from a network of consultants that offer high quality services on survey planning, biostatistics, geospatial modeling, and bioinformatics. Specifically, the Core will create/organize longitudinal datasets, accompanied by dictionaries and metadata, of all survey data previously collected in Peru and Brazil during the 2010-2017 ICEMR Project; ensure that all study sites in Peru and Brazil have the necessary infrastructure to conduct day-to-day data management activities; assist in the preparation of standardized data collection and protocols, and to provide training on the use of data collection software in tablets in all study sites, guaranteeing data quality, standardization, and comparability across sites; enhance data management and statistics research capacity at the Peruvian and Brazilian partner institutions; provide Project leaders with secure access to a set of validated, easy to use databases with clearly-documented information and ready for analyses; provide systematic guidance on study design and data analysis for the proposed projects and for future modifications to the studies in terms of new projects that emerge from the ICEMR program; and interface with PlasmoDB, GenBank, and VectorBase in order to integrate and make publicly available genetic, genomic, and entomological data from the ICEMR sites. Lastly, as part of our proposed resource sharing plan, data will be deposited in the Harvard Dataverse, a public repository, hosted and maintained by Harvard University Information Technology, and in compliance with Harvard University requirements for good computer use practices, including system security requirements (e.g., idle session timeouts; disabling of generic accounts; inhibiting password guessing); operational requirements (e.g., breach reporting; patching; password complexity; logging); and regular auditing and review.
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