Liliane Windsor, PhD

Liliane Windsor, a professor of social work, works with a team of researchers on the COVID-19 Treatment Cascade Optimization Study. The study uses a Sequential, Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial (SMART) with 670 COVID-19 medically/socially vulnerable people. Guided by the COVID-19 Continuum of Prevention, Care, and Treatment, analysis will examine interventions that are associated with testing and adherence to public health recommendations. This study is innovative in its application of existing evidence-based interventions to address COVID-19 and the use of SMART following Community Based Participatory Research principles. It has public health relevance in that it will establish an effective and scalable adaptive intervention to increase COVID-19 testing and adherence to NJ recommendations among a marginalized and difficult to engage population.

The study targets the medically or socially vulnerable populations in marginalized urban communities in Essex County, NJ (e.g., people with co-morbidities, working in high-risk settings, those refusing or unable to adhere to the State of New Jersey (NJ) prevention guidelines). They recruit from a variety of settings including transportation hubs, social media, grocery stores, community-based organizations, pharmacies, and street outreach. The study is funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD), collecting data at North Jersey Community Research Initiative (NJCRI), and uses Community-Based Participatory Research approach by collaborating with Newark Community Collaborative Board (NCCB). The University of Michigan, School of Social Work is also a partner. 

Why did you seek project build services? How did the project build affect what you/your team were able to accomplish? 
The study team needed to use a double randomization for this study and required assistance developing an API to run an additional participant auto randomization outside of REDCap and be integrated into the REDCap project. The support through project build services was essential to the study in that we were able to streamline data collection, eliminate the introduction of human error and loss of information during data transition, reduce the human resource cost for data management, and allow prompt start of data collection for our time-sensitive project.

Have you/your team received research-related training or support from the Illinois REDCap team or other units/resources on campus? If so, how has this support affected what you/your team were able to accomplish?
Our team did not receive any research-related training. However, the Illinois REDCap team provided us with tremendous assistance in providing detailed information and consultation that can improve our data collection process. Some of the functions we currently use for our project may have gone unnoticed if they weren’t recommended by the REDCap team. 

Has using REDCap led to efficiencies or otherwise improved your research process?
Absolutely. Our project wouldn’t have been successful in launching the data collection on time as needed if it wasn’t for the REDCap platform. The level of sophistication and flexibility REDCap provides in their system allows researchers to collect HIPAA data in a secure way with ease. REDCap is fully customizable to meet our study needs and security policies, personalize features and functionality to address different users’ (e.g. data manager, field worker, field manager) needs, and have ability to use APIs to integrate additional features needed easily. REDCap was offered to us for a free, user friendly, secure, flexible yet robust data collection platform. 

What should your colleagues know about Illinois REDCap?
It is free. (project build services are available for a fee)
It is easy to learn and train the users.
You can expect robust support on what you need when you need it from the REDCap team.
It is very flexible and secure.
It is being successfully used in cutting-edge research throughout the world.
It is the best available software for longitudinal clinical trials that does not requires tens of thousands of dollars.