KSOM Dept of PopPublicHS_1 lineWhtGold

COVID-19 Pandemic Research Center (CPRC)

Our Mission

The mission of the Population Health Sciences COVID-19 Pandemic Research Center (CPRC) is to promote translational research using multi-disciplinary approaches to understand and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the health of populations, especially the diverse populations of Los Angeles, California and beyond, especially those experiencing health inequities.

The CPRC is a shared resource that will facilitate research and collaborations among scientists across USC to conduct SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 research in diverse populations. The research conducted by the CPRC includes the following:

  1. Descriptive epidemiology and disease modeling, including identification of disparities;

  2. Identifying risk factors for infection, disease severity and worse outcomes, including environmental exposures, behaviors, genetics, and inequities related to age, gender, race, ethnicity, occupation and socioeconomic status;

  3. Identifying the impacts of health policies and other relevant policies; and

  4. Developing and testing (in randomized trials) prevention approaches to improve protective behaviors including (but not limited to) utilization of testing, immunization and risk behavior reduction, policies related to social distancing, and wearing of personal protection.

These broad aims are being pursued by leveraging existing and newly-forming externally-funded population-based studies led or co-led by DPM faculty, which are diverse in age, sex, race/ethnicity, and health status. Many of these studies are longitudinal cohort studies that have rich pre-existing resources of data on phenotypes, genotypes, behaviors, and archived biosamples. Some of these studies have already added survey measures of COVID-19-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

The CPRC is housed in the Department of Preventive Medicine (DPM) at the Keck School of Medicine (KSOM) at USC. Support for the CPRC is provided by a grant from the KSOM COVID 19 Research Funding Program of the W.M. Keck Foundation, and by internal funds based in the DPM.