Building a collaborative ecosystem across the IDeA-CTR networks in response to a public health emergency

The urgency and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic demanded a coordinated response from public health agencies and the biomedical research community. The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) was established as a centralized enclave in 2020 to support the study of COVID-19 across the U.S. The Institutional Development Award for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) centers enhanced N3C's national response by bringing representation from rural and medically underserved communities. This improved the representation of our diverse populations in the N3C Enclave and its use for research by IDeA-state investigators.

We developed an organizational structure across the IDeA-CTRs to improve research productivity in resource-challenged areas of the U.S. This socio-technical ecosystem, informed by community input, included a governance committee and two workstreams. The operations workstream focused on data management and regulatory compliance, while the navigation, education, analysis, and training (NEAT) workstream supported educational and analytical activities for the N3C Enclave.

Our collaborative approach led to participation by 12 IDeA-CTRs, representing over 400 investigators from 23 sites. The shared governance, investigator engagement, and resource pooling enhanced research productivity and engagement with researchers across IDeA states. Participation in this IDeA-CTR N3C consortium enhanced informatics research capacity and collaboration across the IDeA-CTRs for participating networks.

This collaborative model provides a roadmap and framework for future efforts among IDeA-CTRs and other academic partnerships. The socio-technical ecosystem fostered collectivism and team science, enabling the consortium to achieve far more than isolated efforts could, offering valuable insights for interdisciplinary research across geographically dispersed communities.