Welcome to Duke Community Health Watch

Our research program is designed to help you monitor your health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our goal is to help keep you safe and connected. Duke Community Health Watch will:

• Help you monitor any symptoms you may be having and provide guidance on how to care for yourself at home
• Provide guidance on when to seek medical care if your symptoms increase
• Support you in following recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and your local public health department

How does it work?

Using a web-based survey that is secure and easy to use, our team of medical professionals will help you monitor your symptoms of the coronavirus and offer guidance on how to care for yourself throughout the pandemic.

Our program is open to everyone, regardless of age or where you live. Here are some details:

• You do not need to have symptoms to sign up for the program
• If you are symptom-free but then start to show symptoms, our team of medical professionals will give you feedback on what to do
• You will record symptoms using our web-based survey twice per day each day for a total of 28 days. To make it easy for you, our team will send you reminders
• Our medical professionals will monitor your symptoms. If your symptoms worsen, we will increase our outreach to you. We may recommend options for seeking care, such as a direct referral to your physician or taking immediate action, like dialing 911 in an emergency situation
• If you forget to report your symptoms during a 24-hour period, we will call you directly to make sure you are okay. If we cannot reach you within 48 hours of your missed check-in, we will reach out to your emergency contact and ask them to check on you

Keeping your information secure

This program combines technology and human expertise. The tool is built on REDCap, a software tool used by public health departments around the United States to monitor for COVID-19. A group of clinical experts developed the set of questions that we ask you and the alerting system. A physician is helping manage the team of people making phone calls.

Duke Community Health Watch is a member of the Pandemic Response Network, a group of organizations working together to monitor symptom escalation throughout the U.S. in order to track possible new outbreaks of COVID-19.