Assessing the value of blood donor data for public health surveillance - CanPath - Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health

CanPath – Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health Search

About Us
- Purpose, Vision & Mission
  CanPath is working in partnership to prevent disease and provide a platform for scientists to conduct innovative research.
- Our History
  The Canadian Partnership Against Cancer established the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project (now CanPath) in June 2008.
- Leadership & Governance
  Meet the members of CanPath's Leadership Team, Operations Committee, National Strategic Advisory Council and more.
- National Coordinating Centre
  Meet the members of CanPath's operational core, based at the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
- Regional Cohorts
  Seven regional cohorts across ten provinces comprise CanPath's pan-Canadian partnership.
- Funders & Supporters
  Learn more about the partner organizations that provide funding and in-kind support to CanPath.
- Frequently Asked Questions
  Find out how CanPath will improve the health of Canadians and more.
- Contact us
  How to reach CanPath by phone, email, in-person, or make a data access request.
Research
- About the Study
  CanPath is Canada’s largest population health cohort and a gateway platform to data worldwide.
- Access Process
  The CanPath Access Portal provides researchers with the necessary resources to identify epidemiological and biological data available from participating cohorts to answer innovative research questions.
- Approved Projects & Studies
  CanPath has supported more than 100 research projects and activities, many of which have resulted in publications in high impact journals.
- Publications
  These publications are examples of research made possible with data from CanPath and its regional cohorts.
- Funding & Grant Opportunities
- COVID-19 Initiatives
  As Canada’s largest population health study, CanPath responded quickly to the pandemic by leveraging its existing infrastructure to support national COVID-19 research.
- Student Dataset
  CanPath's Student Dataset provides students the unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience working with CanPath data.
- Collaborations
  The CanPath team is committed to collaborating with partners in order to enhance and accelerate research for a healthier Canada.
Participants
- About the Study
  CanPath is Canada’s largest population health cohort and a gateway platform to data worldwide.
- Participant Snapshot
  Understand the unique social, economic and health characteristics of CanPath participants and how this information is captured for research.
- Meet CanPath Participants
  Hundreds of thousands of Canadians have come together to be part of a study that reveals real breakthroughs.
- COVID-19 Antibody Study FAQ
  CanPath and its regional cohorts are conducting a COVID-19 antibody study of 20,000 participants across Canada.
News & Events
CanPath Access Portal

Assessing the value of blood donor data for public health surveillance

Principal Investigator: Dr. Alton Russell

Affiliation: McGill University

Start Year: 2023

This project is being led by Yuan Yan, a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University.

Information on population immunity to COVID-19 comes from different types of studies. Some, like CanPath, invite randomly selected individuals to participate. Other studies use populations who are already having blood drawn, such as blood donors. While monitoring immunity levels with a convenient population like blood donors can be implemented quickly and inexpensively, some subgroups of the population may be underrepresented or missing, leading to ‘blind spots’. At the same time, response rates to surveys with randomly-invited participants during COVID-19 were low, which could also threaten the representativeness of those studies. In this study, we will compare COVID-19 antibody data from blood donors to CanPath and other studies with randomly sampled participants to assess differences in which sociodemographic and geographic subgroups are represented. We will also analyze the extent to which different methods of statistical adjustment can correct for underrepresentation of certain groups and improve the accuracy of population measures of COVID-19 immunity derived from both blood donor data and studies like CanPath.