Cohort studies follow large groups of people over a long period of time. The researchers formulate a number of questions in advance that they would like to see answered. In the case of covid, these are questions such as: how does the virus spread through all population groups, what influence do certain treatments have on the course of the disease, how do people deal with the consequences of the pandemic? Below, you can read an overview of cohort studies to which Amsterdam UMC makes an important contribution.
Ethnic minorities
The Department of Social Medicine conducts epidemiological research on a cross-section of the Dutch population. Starting point are the questions: how does the disease spread and how can we improve the models that make predictions about this?
Professor Karien Stronks is conducting research into the influence of ethnicity on the epidemiology of covid-19 in the Netherlands: what are the consequences for the infection rate within various ethnic groups and for disease outcomes? They will also investigate to what extent government control measures reach ethnic minorities and whether they take the recommended protective measures. Finally, the researchers want to know what impact these measures have on individual lives. The focus is on well-being and the use of non-covid care.
Care in the intensive care unit
The Department of Medical Information Science processes data from all Dutch ICUs. They do this for the National Intensive Care Evaluation (NICE) register. Since the corona outbreak, this register has been expanded with an online near real-time registration of covid-19 patients in the ICU, which will be linked to more detailed clinical data.
This information is used for capacity planning and outbreak surveillance by the RIVM, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport and the National Coordination Centre for Patient Propensity (LCPS). More information can be found via NICE.
Artificial intelligence
The Intensive Care Adults (Paul Elbers) and the Department of Neurology (Martijn Beudel) are leading a multicentre study in collaboration with Maastricht UMC+ in which clinical data will be collected from covid patients admitted to Dutch hospitals. The data will be collected according to the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO). More information about the study can be found here. We wrote about the study previously, which can be found here.
Behavioural research
The measures the government has taken in the fight against the new coronavirus have a huge impact on the daily life of everyone. The government would like to know if the population can take these measures and what they think about it. The RIVM, the GGD and the GHOR (Geneeskundige Hulpverleningsorganisatie in de Regio) are conducting a large-scale study into the consequences of these behavioural measures for health and welfare. Researchers from the Department of Social Medicine of Amsterdam UMC (Professor Daniëlle Timmermans and Professor Charles Agyemang) are involved in this study.
The research focuses on the influence of communication and policy during the pandemic on knowledge, attitude, behaviour and preventive behaviour. The researchers also want to know how the health of the population (physical, psychological and social) develops during the coronas crisis. The RIVM also investigates the long-term effects of policy measures on psychology, behaviour and society (e.g. loneliness, drug and alcohol use). Read more here.