Development of the 2022 WHO Standardized Verbal Autopsy Instrument

I participated in the revision of the WHO standardized verbal autopsy (VA) instrument released in 2022. The project brought together physicians, population-health scientists, and applied statisticians to review limitations of existing instruments and revise the VA questionnaire, including its ability to capture newly emerging diseases such as COVID-19. The resulting WHO instrument supports mortality surveillance and applied research in low- and middle-income countries.

My role centered on technical input during the revision process, with attention to how the instrument could better support consistent data collection and downstream cause-of-death analysis.