The NCIRD Influenza Division (ID) is seeking to initiate a cooperative agreement with the School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong, (UHK), the Peoples’ Republic of China, to conduct research studies among older adults on the epidemiology, disease burden, and effectiveness of annual

credit:

How's Your Community Doing?
Check Out it's
Community Vital Signs

or twice a year vaccination for influenza.

The University of Hong Kong has an established respiratory virus active surveillance system among older adults in a region of China with twice-yearly periods of influenza circulation, which can be utilized to expand and conduct additional research on disease burden and vaccine efficacy in this population.

This surveillance platform has allowed the research team at UHK to better understand risk factors for mild to severe influenza disease; however, it has not generated significant data on the burden of influenza or influenza vaccine effectiveness in the older adult population.

This new cooperative agreement will allow NCIRD ID to expand collaborations with UHK to examine this population in more depth as well as to better understand best vaccine practices in this age group.

This cooperative agreement could build upon the existing surveillance system in China or lessons learned from that system could be used in teh future to establish this project in another country in the Asia-Pacific region.