Prevent COVID U’s researchers have set the ambitious goal of recruiting and tracking up to 12,000 college students, ages 18 to 26, at the 22 universities and then following them over a five-month period. Here in Bloomington, Prevent COVID U is led by Dr. Molly Rosenberg and Dr. Christina Ludema of the IU School of Public Health Bloomington and Aaron Ermel, MD, of the IU School of Medicine. Prevent COVID U’s findings will help scientists answer key questions about life-after-vaccination and the potential (if any) of transmitting the disease to others.
"I am excited about having IU contribute to a study that is of such critical importance," says Rosenberg, an assistant professor at the IU School of Public Health Bloomington. "We know we have an arsenal of vaccines that are extremely effective at preventing COVID-19 disease and death. But we don't know whether any of these vaccines prevent asymptomatic transmission. That’s a question that needs to be answered."
In addition to Rosenberg and Ludema, key members of the IU research team include Aaron Carroll, MD, Lana Dbeibo, MD, and Kathy Hiller, MD, Associate Dean of the IU School of Medicine Bloomington; Beth Rupp, MD, of the IU Student Health Center; and IUSON’s Dr. Mary Lynn Davis-Ajami. This dedicated team of researchers worked long hours in a highly collaborative manner to quickly ramp up testing and tracking protocols on the IU campus that met both the study’s national protocol and timelines.
The team also forged larger collaborations with other universities across the country to develop recruitment procedures that were both standardized across the 22 schools participating in the research, while accurately reflecting the diversity of the student populations being studied. Davis-Ajami says that this wider collaboration was “extraordinarily helpful” and could set the stage for IU to participate in other large-scale clinical trials.