The COVID-19 pandemic poses grave risks to countries across the globe. India may be particularly vulnerable as it has relatively weak health systems, high population density, a growing non-communicable disease burden, and a large low-income population. Since May 2020, we have developed and administered a bi- monthly phone survey which will continue over the course of 12 months, tracking the knowledge of and attitude toward COVID-19, as well as monitoring changes in the respondents? health, cognition, health care utilization, and household income and consumption, for a large subsample of the Harmonized Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia for the Longitudinal Aging Study in India. The Harmonized Diagnostic Assessment of Dementia for the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI-DAD) is the first and only nationally representative and publicly available dataset on late-life cognition and dementia in India. It administers the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) that is designed to be harmonized with ongoing longitudinal studies of aging around the world, including the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the United States and prior studies in India. This rich set of cognitive phenotypes and a variety of other health and social environment phenotypes, as well as genotype data from whole genome sequencing, give us a unique opportunity to identify the mutational spectrum underlying the risk of dementia and AD in a representative sample in India. In this application, we aim to conduct two additional rounds of phone surveys over the following 12-month period after the conclusion of the current one-year period to capture longer term effects of the COVID pandemic. The pandemic has influenced everyday lives, and it is likely that these effects may be sustained in the longer term. In order to capture such prolonged effects, we aim to collect two additional rounds of data over a 12-month time period. Leveraging the first wave of LASI-DAD, we will then investigate how COVID-19- related changes in the social, economic, and policy environments differentially impact the respondents? health, particularly cognition and dementia. We will also aim to release data to the wider research community so all interested researchers will have access to eight rounds of rich, nationally representative panel data throughout and after the pandemic.
This work will provide two additional rounds of phone survey data for estimating the longer-term impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in India. We will investigate how COVID-19-related changes in the social, economic, and policy environments impact cognition and dementia and we will make the collected data widely available for the research community.
