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 engaged a wide audience of experts from physicians, population health scientists, applied statisticians to gather evidence on limitations of existing VA instruments, and propose and discuss point-by-point the revised version of VA enabling identification of newly-emerged diseseases such as COVID-10. The revised VA instruments will be new standardized WHO VA instrument used in mortality surveillance systems, and applied research settings, in low- and middle-income countries around the world.

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.