Team Science,Population Health,and COVID-19: Lessons Learned Adapting a Population Health Research Team to COVID-19

Our multidisciplinary research team is composed of 6 faculty with expertise in internal medicine, nephrology, maternal/fetal medicine, health services research, statistics, and community-based research, and 36 program staff including biostatisticians, nurses, program coordinators, program assistants, and medical assistants/phlebotomists. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it was having on our community, especially the ethnic minority population in inner-city Milwaukee, we felt it was critical to stay engaged and figure out how to ask meaningful research questions that are important to the community, are relevant to the times, and will lead to lasting change. While navigating this unprecedented challenge, our research team made difficult decisions but were able to engage our staff and respond to community needs. We organized our lessons learned to serve as a perspective on how to effectively remain committed to vision and serve our communities, while collecting evidence that can inform policy in difficult times.

Our multidisciplinary research team is composed of 6 faculty with expertise in internal medicine, nephrology, maternal/fetal medicine, health services research, statistics, and community-based research and 36 program staff including biostatistician, nurses, program coordinators, program assistants, and medical assistants/phlebotomists. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact it was having on our community, especially the ethnic minority population in inner-city Milwaukee, we felt it was critical to stay engaged and figure out how to ask meaningful research questions that are important to the community, relevant to the times, and will lead to lasting change.Our team’s work is focused on addressing health disparities among vulnerable populations including the elderly, racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, and low-income primarily in the Greater Milwaukee Metro Area of Wisconsin. Milwaukee is the most diverse city in Wisconsin and recently became a minority-majority city with 53% of city residents of racial/ethnic minority background.¹ It is also one of the most segregated cities in the USA, where community-based research focused on addressing the underlying causes of health disparities is greatly needed.^2–4 At the start of the year, we had 3 large NIH-funded R01s, 2 career development grants, 1 diversity supplement, and 3 large foundation-funded research projects with total community-based recruitment targeted across the studies at roughly 2000 participants.^5–7 To accomplish this, we ramped up hiring to have 36 staff including biostatisticians, nurses, program coordinators, program assistants, and medical assistants/phlebotomists.Then, COVID-19 hit with shelter-in-place orders, school system closures, and limitations on public gatherings.⁸ Our institution placed restrictions on social contact with participants, recruitment was halted, and study staff were moved out of the community and into remote work environments. We were faced with significant challenges in supporting our research and our staff. The economic downfall from COVID-19 resulted in record-breaking levels of unemployment and the predominantly minority and low-income populations we served needed support despite our limitations.⁹ While navigating this unprecedented challenge, our research team had to make difficult decisions but were able to engage our staff and respond to community needs. These are the lessons learned in the process: