Open AccessData Collection and Harmonization in HIV Research: The Seek, Test, Treat, and Retain Initiative at the National Institute on Drug Abuse
Author(s) -
Redonna K. Chandler,
Shoshana Y. Kahana,
Bennett W. Fletcher,
Dionne J. Jones,
Matthew S. Finger,
Will M. Aklin,
Kathleen Hamill,
Candace Webb
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2015.302788
Subject(s) - harmonization , comparability , data collection , psychological intervention , public health , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , medicine , test (biology) , environmental health , public relations , data science , political science , family medicine , computer science , psychiatry , nursing , sociology , paleontology , social science , physics , mathematics , combinatorics , acoustics , biology
Large-scale, multisite data sets offer the potential for exploring the public health benefits of biomedical interventions. Data harmonization is an emerging strategy to increase the comparability of research data collected across independent studies, enabling research questions to be addressed beyond the capacity of any individual study. The National Institute on Drug Abuse recently implemented this novel strategy to prospectively collect and harmonize data across 22 independent research studies developing and empirically testing interventions to effectively deliver an HIV continuum of care to diverse drug-abusing populations. We describe this data collection and harmonization effort, collectively known as the Seek, Test, Treat, and Retain Data Collection and Harmonization Initiative, which can serve as a model applicable to other research endeavors.