Health and Demographic Surveillance System

The HDSS has provided data to most PIs and students in The Unit who have implemented world leading research aimed at saving lives and improving health across the world. Several outputs have been published from the HDSS from its inception across the three sites. This platform tries to achieve and ensures support to other platforms/themes and sub-themes across the Unit and has supported a number of cluster randomized trials on malaria interventions, trials on pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PVS), studies on trends in vaccine-associated behavior and Inter-generational follow-up (biobank in Keneba that follows families)for nutrition and planetary health studies among others.
Presently the HDSS is trying to achieve a strengthened system as per its EDC system for data collection, link health facility data with HDSS data – Electronic Medical Record System in selected facilities and increase visibility and collaborative links. This is important because it will enable easy access to curated, accurate, consistent and improved data quality, while maintaining stability thus creating visibility and more collaborations both internally and externally.

The Unit maintains three Health and Demographic Surveillance Systems in Basse, Farafenni, and West Kiang. The HDSS collects data on vital events, namely births, deaths, migrations, pregnancy, educational level, ethnicity, vaccination status, socio economic status and cause of death (through Verbal Autopsies) using the electronic data capture (EDC) method via RedCap application. We aim to provide baseline data, sampling frame and identify clinical cases/study subjects to scientists for community-based research. We also provide a denominator for estimating impact studies, generate longitudinal information on the health of the population and provide quantitative evidence for scientific investigations as well as monitor demographic and mortality trends in populations.