Longitudinal Data in Developing Countries: New approaches to increase sustainability and wider access

Longitudinal data have become essential to explore both the evolution of risk and the impact of program interventions for a whole range of health problems. However there is a dearth of longitudinal databases in the developing world and the few that do exist provide access to relatively few researchers. This is despite the fact that the majority of data that is collected worldwide remains unanalyzed. The International Public Health Community needs to develop new models which will allow for sustainable data collection regimes and equitable data sharing strategies that allow data to be accessed by a wide group of researchers.

We at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) are embarking on a long term data collection exercise which involves following 3000 households at six month intervals in five adhoc communities throughout Bangladesh. In addition to household and individual level data, detailed community level data will also be collected. This data collection project is distinctive and innovative in two important respects. First it will use university students (as part of a required course) to collect and input data into a computerized archive. This strategy allows for sustainability independent of project funding. Second the collected data will be released into the public domain to allow for the widest possible use of the data. The hope here is that wider use of the data will allow for better quality checks and more innovation in topics that need to be explored.