CanPath uses national platform to support COVID-19 research

The Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow’s Health (CanPath) has launched an initiative to support COVID-19 research, working alongside national partners to develop a questionnaire that will be distributed to over 420,000 people across Canada. Participants are those included in CanPath’s and its partners’ studies. In the absence of widespread testing for COVID-19, information collected from this questionnaire will help measure the spread and severity of the virus in communities in all parts of the country.

The data collected through the questionnaire will build on previously captured data in the CanPath platform to determine the biological, societal and behavioural factors that affect susceptibility to COVID-19. By identifying the individual-level risk factors (ex., genetic, environment, previous health history), it will help public health officials and clinicians to be more targeted with prevention and treatment strategies.

The data collected through the initiative will also provide a real-time assessment of the prevalence of COVID-19 and will allow for the study of the longer term socio-economic and health impacts of the virus.

CanPath is Canada’s largest population health study which, for over 10 years, has built up a platform to collect and analyze health data from over 300,000 people. CanPath was previously called the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow Project (CPTP) and was led by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer up until 2018 when it was transitioned to the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, along with strategic partner the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research.