# Longitudinal study of health outcomes and mitigating factors in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic

> **NIH NIH R01** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $706,889

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
The global pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has already claimed over 2 million lives and caused economic
and social disruption on an unprecedented scale. There is growing concern about long-term consequences of
the pandemic on physical and mental health outcomes of children, stemming from both the illness and from
associated disruptions in the economic, social, and healthcare domains. Our overall goal is to study
trajectories of child/adolescent mental health and primary healthcare utilization including immunization,
in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our project, located in India, will test key hypotheses about the
pandemic’s impact on health outcomes, vulnerability to future shocks, and sources of heterogeneity in these
relationships. A strategic innovation is to create a new health panel dataset - called the SurvEy of HeAlth
Trends (SEHAT), which means “health” in Hindi - by leveraging the world’s largest household panel data on
consumption and economic outcomes in India. The SEHAT data will be a new health module spanning 9 waves
from September 2021 – August 2024 to generate timely evidence on the pandemic’s impact on trajectories of
health outcomes. Our project on three COVID-related stressors: (1) disruptions in economic circumstances,
(2) disruptions in the social environment, or (3) exposure to severe COVID illness within family networks. We
estimate the association between these stressors and (a) mental health, and (b) rates of immunization and
primary healthcare utilization. Our second aim is to examine impact of COVID-related stressors on
vulnerability to future shocks. Using 9 waves of panel data over a three-year period, we will examine new
economic shocks, such as job or income losses in the household, and their cumulative effects on child health
outcomes. Our main hypothesis is that the negative impact of future shocks on child health outcomes will be
greater in magnitude among children in households that experienced higher levels of COVID-related stressors
compared with children from households with lower levels of these stressors. We will also leverage the large
amount of data to examine sources of heterogeneity in COVID impacts on child health outcomes, by factors such
as gender, caste, or household composition. Our third aim is to make SEHAT panel dataset publicly available
to facilitate research and inform policy. Our study aims to collect health data that can be transformative for
research and evidence-based policy. We plan to release descriptive statistics on key indicators immediately after
every wave, with accompanying policy briefs. After completion of SEHAT data collection in August 2024, we will
publicly release microdata by August 2026, prior to end of the grant period. We will also publish detailed
documentation to facilitate analysis using the SEHAT data.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10345879
- **Project number:** 1R01HD107420-01
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Joanna Maselko
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $706,889
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-21 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10345879

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10345879, Longitudinal study of health outcomes and mitigating factors in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic (1R01HD107420-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10345879. Licensed CC0.

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