National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C)

The N3C is a partnership among the NCATS-supported Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program hubs and the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H), with overall stewardship by NCATS. Collaborators will contribute and use COVID-19 clinical data to answer critical research questions to address the pandemic.

An NCATS N3C webpage was created to provide program resources and governance documents, such as the Data Transfer Agreement (DTA), Data Use Agreement (DUA), User Code of Conduct, and frequently asked questions relating to governance, as well as information on required NIH security training, acknowledging N3C in publications and presentations, and guiding principles for engaging with the community. 

In parallel, the N3C website provides information for registering to N3C/CD2H; creating an account and entering the N3C Data Enclave; individual workstream, subgroup, and task team information; as well as frequently asked questions for data access and use. There are also dashboards and N3C project lists currently being created to allow for collaboration and engagement. 

N3C has also made materials available for public view through Zenodo, a general-purpose open-access repository: the N3C IRB protocol, Community Guiding Principles, Attribution and Publication Principles for N3C among others with more to come. 

CD2H and NCATS have partnered to quickly build this important national resource to study the COVID pandemic. We are enormously grateful for the communities across the CTSAs and the common data models that have rallied with us to make this possible. We are excited about what we and our partners can learn from this shared resource and are confident that this can advance our collaborative efforts to address this health crisis. 

 

Data Use Request 

In order to get access to the N3C data investigators need to submit an online application called a Data Use Request or DUR. This guide outlines the steps for an investigator to submit a DUR for a new project or submit a DUR to join and existing project. 

Overview of the Data User Request (DUR) Process 

1. Investigator submits a Data Use Request. 

2. Data Access Committee (DAC) Reviews and Approves the research project 

3. Investigators are given access to the analytics workbench 

IMPORTANT! READ the checklist before starting the Data Use Request (DUR) process.

 

Questions? Contact James Aaron at james.aaron@uky.edu.