Project: Biostatistical Methods for Longitudinal Analysis of Burden of Lung Health and Tuberculosis in Africa

Acronym	BioStat-LAB Africa (Reference Number: TMA2017SF-1959)
Duration	01/12/2018 - 30/11/2021
Project Topic	Respiratory-related disease, including TB and repeated lower respiratory tract infections (LRTI) remain a major source of mortality and morbidity in Africa. Early childhood exposures are increasingly thought to be a major contributing factor to later in life reduced lung function and increased TB susceptibility. Clinical research including longitudinal measures of exposure, pathogen and other potential risk factors is rare in Africa. The critical need for biostatistical capacity in Africa is greater than ever. With increasing numbers and sophistication of clinical research being carried out by African institutions and African investigators, biostatistics and analytic capacity remains a bottleneck. Collaborative, high trained clinical biostatisticians improve the knowledge and understanding available from clinical research and efforts must be made to incorporate their training into clinical research. Leveraging collaborations with two studies carrying out important work on longitudinal determinants of TB and LRTI in children in Africa, the proposed work will develop novel methodological contributions to appropriate statistical designs and analysis in early childhood lung health. Through this process we will contribute to understanding the role of pathogen interactions, household and environmental pollution, clinical and demographic risk factors have on development of LRTI and TB risk. This work will contribute to building key biostatistics capacity by training two PhD students and four Masters students, and further the career development of the Senior Fellow. This project will advance scientific knowledge on the major poverty-related diseases, TB and lower respiratory tract infections, and contribute to the body of analytic methods and models for the analysis of such data.
Network	EDCTP2
Call	Senior Fellowships 2017

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	University of Cape Town	Coordinator	South Africa