Development of the 2022 WHO Standardized Verbal Autopsy Instrument

Role

Technical workshop participant, WHO Verbal Autopsy Reference Group

I participated in a technical workshop and contributed to the advisory-group process for revising the WHO standardized verbal autopsy (VA) instrument released in 2022. The revision brought together physicians, population-health scientists, and applied statisticians to review limitations in existing instruments and update the questionnaire, including its ability to capture newly emerging diseases such as COVID-19.

My input focused on how the instrument could support consistent data collection and downstream cause-of-death analysis.