Harnessing Data Science to Promote Equity in Injury and Surgery for Africa - PROJECT SUMMARY
The Data Science Center for Surgery, Injury, and Equity in Africa (D-SINE-Africa) is an NIH-funded research
hub located at the University of Buea (Buea) in Cameroon through the current Data Science in Africa (DS-I
Africa) initiative. D-SINE Africa is a strategic partnership between Buea, the University of California (Los
Angeles (UCLA) and Berkeley), the Cameroonian Ministry of Public Health, the African Institute for
Mathematical Sciences in Cameroon, and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. This coalition is built
upon a long-term collaboration between Buea and UCLA focused on decreasing the burden of surgical
diseases in Cameroon and other sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Injuries and other surgically treated
diseases comprise a significant burden of disease in SSA, but opportunities for research and funding are
sparse. Our work on injury and other surgical conditions has identified deep inequities that are particularly
unmasked in acute care settings. The intersection between injury and equity is our priority area of study, as the
inequities revealed by trauma are often symptomatic of larger, systemic, cross-cutting issues. Our mission is to
leverage data science to decrease the impact of trauma, surgical disease, and disparities on the populations of
Cameroon and SSA by promoting research, networking, and capacity building. We are accomplishing this
through three Center Cores and two Research Projects. These two projects rely on the Cameroon Trauma
Registry (CTR), a 10-hospital centralized data base that collects data on demographics, context, clinical care,
and outcomes for trauma patients. To date, the CTR has collected data on over 8000 Cameroonian trauma
patients and, at approximately 450 patients per month. The overall goal of D-SINE Africa’s Project 2 is to
optimize follow up care, which is done through an mHealth follow up program that currently collects data from
injured patients at two weeks, one month, three months, and six months after discharge, capturing rare
information on disability and economic consequences of trauma. As poor mental health and previous injury are
both risk factors for future injury, mental health issues have a compounding effect on trauma patients’ future
risk of injury and death. Consequently, our Project 2’s goal may be significantly affected by mental health
conditions, which are currently not being measured in the mHealth program. This supplement aims to mitigate
this unexpected challenge by modifying the existing follow up protocol. We aim to 1) adapt the existing follow
up mHealth app to screen patients for the mental health conditions most commonly associated with traumatic
injury; 2) estimate the prevalence of trauma patients who are at high risk for these conditions; and 3) evaluate
the acceptability of a candidate community-based mental health intervention using a rapid qualitative CFIR
framework-based deductive analysis. By achieving these aims, we will have a robust assessment of the
prevalence of mental health correlates of trauma in Cameroon, allowing us to incorporate them into our Project
2’s follow up optimization, and have a preliminary understanding of the acceptability of a promisingintervention.
