Data Archiving for a Decade-Long View of HIV in Young Adulthood

Tsogolo La Thanzi (TLT) is a decade-long NICHD-funded population-based cohort study of young women and men from Balaka, Malawi. TLT has followed young adults (ages 15-25 at enrollment, 15-35 inclusive) as they navigate relationships and childbearing within the context of a generalized AIDS epidemic. TLT enrolled more than 3000 individuals and collected 11 waves of data, covering a 10-year period (2009-2019) that spans massive changes in the HIV treatment context in Malawi as well as the ages of peak incidence and peak fertility for female respondents. Due to the high sampling fraction, circumscribed geographic setting, and extremely detailed data on affiliations, behaviors, and characteristics, these data are sensitive and vulnerable to risks of deductive disclosure. TLT data collected between 2009-15 have already been made publicly available via Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR). The intent of this proposal is twofold: 1) to make the latest round of TLT data (fielded in 2019) accessible to the research community while protecting respondent confidentiality and 2) to strategically recruit and support new data users in public health and the social sciences. In collaboration with experts at NICHD-supported Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR), the TLT study team will deposit two valuable data sources (local census and survey), accompanied by high-quality documentation to guide scholars in their proper use. Moreover, the study team will create a toolkit for new and potential data users to support the community of TLT data users by sharing code for data analysis. The team will also lead outreach efforts to recruit new data users from beyond the original study team, with a focus on supporting new users from low-income contexts. Organized around the aims of data archiving (Aim 1), quality documentation (Aim 2), and data promotion (Aim 3), this proposed project seeks to enhance the scientific impact of the TLT study and broaden the knowledge underpinning research and policy with respect to the changing nature of HIV, fertility, mortality, marriage, education, and technology use that characterize Balaka, Malawi, and also much of sub-Saharan Africa. Project Number: 1R03HD114550-01A1 | Fiscal Year: 2025 | NIH Institute/Center: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) | Principal Investigator: Jenny Trinitapoli | Institution: UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, CHICAGO, IL | Award Amount: $164,000 | Activity Code: R03 | Study Section: Population Sciences Study Section[CHHD-W] View on NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/1R03HD11455001A1