Multi-Disciplinary COVID-19 Research Prioritization in Low-Resource Settings: The Ethiopia Model

Background: The global pandemic of COVID-19 has claimed more than 300 thousand lives with more than 4.7 million confirmed cases to date. While the guiding principle for emergency response relies on existing health infrastructure and mechanisms, strategies for containment should include implementing prioritized, coordinated and streamlined research to identify efficient methods for utilizations of constrained resources during pandemic response. Methods: A 27-member multi-disciplinary national coronavirus research taskforce (NCoVRT) was established by the Ethiopian Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) in March of 2020. The taskforce developed survey questions and collected data using Qualtrix® online survey from 281 consented participants representing 52 academic and research institutions. Data on the 14 research categories and subcategories were collected and analyzed based on a Likert scale. Mean values with 95% confidence intervals were analyzed using dot-plot analysis applying a p-value of 0.05 for statistical significance. Findings: Results showed Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) areas received very high priority rankings:1) personal protective equipment (PPE) access (77.4%); 2) movement control within healthcare facilities, wards and units (59.9%); 3) PPE effectiveness (56.2%); 4) socio-cultural behaviors for IPC (56%); and, 5) disinfection methods and approaches (67.1%). Movement control of infected individuals was the top-ranking subcategory and was identified in a significantly higher proportion of non-healthcare professionals than healthcare (p<0.05). Respondents identified five of the clinical management areas as very high priorities: 1) intervention to measure clinical outcomes (72.8%); 2) high throughput testing (64.3%); 3) innovative alternatives to ventilation systems (61.5%); 4) assessment of optimal clinical practices (59.4%); and, 5) diagnostic stewardship (59.4%). Ranking of the priority areas identified accurate communication as the top-ranking area. Interpretation: We developed a COVID-19 research prioritization and ranking online tool that can be adopted and refined. The prioritization findings show the importance of a multi-disciplinary and multi-faceted approach to prioritize short, medium and long-term research areas.Funding Statement: This study was funded by intramural resources from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) and The Ohio State University, Global One Health initiative (GOHi).Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.Ethics Approval Statement: Data were collected with full anonymity and consent of respondents following guidelines of the National Research Ethics Review Committee (NRERC) coordinated by MoSHE.