Deadline: 22-Mar-2024
The Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE) is calling for proposals to assist work in bioinformatics and wastewater environmental surveillance (WES) of pathogens within low and middle- income countries (LMICs) in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America.
This sub-grant is intended for public health and research labs in LMICs that have performed pathogen genomic surveillance of wastewater. PHA4GE has developed a standardized wastewater contextual data specification to better capture and harmonize wastewater-based genomic surveillance data across labs, systems and datasets, in order to improve interoperability.
The goal of the project is to test the specification package to ensure its utility and usability for information capture in different settings, for different kinds of samples, sampling strategies, and methods.
The aim of this award is to put data standards into practice to better facilitate the harmonized capture of the contextual data pertaining to genomics-based surveillance of wastewater environmental samples. Teams will work with PHA4GE to test and provide feedback on the WES specification package. While they hope that these awards catalyze the uptake of data standards to facilitate wastewater genomic surveillance data collection, harmonization, integration and analyses, the purpose of the award is to solicit feedback on the data standard.
As such, steps to testing and providing input on the specification are:
- Laboratories with wastewater genomics contextual data will familiarize themselves with the specification, data collection tools and curation guide.
- Laboratories will attend a curation training session.
- Laboratories will curate their contextual data using the provided fields, terms and formats, and assess i) the ease of use of the tools, ii) the coverage of needed/desired vocabulary, iii) identify any missing data elements.
- Laboratories will complete the feedback form and submit it to PHA4GE by the deadline.
- Laboratories will discuss their results with a PHA4GE representative for the purposes of improving the specification.
Objectives
- Awardees will work with PHA4GE to:
- Improve the WES data standard, tools, and support materials via testing and providing feedback.
- Demonstrate global utility, community development, and co-creation of genomic surveillance specifications.
Funding Information
- Up to ten (10) sub-grants with a total value of USD 50,000 (USD 5,000 each).
Deliverables
- Awardees will:
- Attend a training workshop.
- Use the tools and standards to curate at least 10 different sample types (representing different materials, sites, geographical locations, etc.).
- After testing, complete the provided feedback form.
- Participate in a debriefing session regarding their experiences in the project, and suggested feedback.
Fore more information, visit PHA4GE.