Last month, the second edition of the Cohort Coordination Board (CCB) Activity Report was published, providing a comprehensive overview of the Board’s activities and outputs between 1 January 2024 and 30 April 2025. An overview of the report was presented at the CCB’s first in-person workshop on 22 September in Rome, Italy.
The CCB was launched in April 2022 to provide a space for EU-funded projects performing COVID-19 cohort-based research to collaborate and share best practices. A First Report was published in 2024, providing insight into the first 21 months of CCB activities. This second report shows how the CCB has evolved significantly since January 2024, expanding its thematic scope outside of COVID-19 into mpox and other infectious diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential, reinforcing its operational structures, and consolidating its role in new initiatives.
Evolution of Cohort Coordination Board
The CCB impact has deepened following a shift in focus from COVID-19 to wider infectious diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential. A growth in members has also been recorded with 11 new projects bringing the total to 27 permanent member projects now involved. Additionally, two new working groups have also been established, focusing on the use of artificial intelligence in cohort studies and aligning data collection of mpox studies.
Key achievements
The report outlines the key achievements of the CCB in this period among which is named the launch of the dedicated CCB website, the development and population of the Central Data Repository, the coordination of formal responses to the European Commission and European Medicines Agency on Long COVID and real-world data use in regulatory decision-making and the publication of a high-impact article on Post-Acute Infection Syndromes.
CCB Sustainability
Finally, the report presents the sustainability of the CCB with the inclusion of its activities into new projects: PIPELINE (focused on pregnancy and infant cohorts), PROACT EU-Response (regarding AI-driven target trial emulations), and BE READY NOW (a foundational initiative for a future European Pandemic Preparedness Partnership).
The full report can be found at this link: https://cohortcoordinationboard.eu/toolkit/second-report-of-the-ccb/
This report is a collaborative effort between ID-CARE director and CCB Chair Evelina Tacconelli, CCB Co-Chair Ali Judd, ID-CARE team members (Rosanna Flett, Ruth Davis, Lorenzo Maria Canziani, Catherine Fleming, Matteo Morra, Alessandra Nazeri and Alessandro Visentin) and the CCB Working Group Leads (Anna Górska, Thomas Jaenisch, Xavier Lescure, Lauren Maxwell, Zoi Pana, José Luis Peñalvo).
This work is part of the VERDI (101045989), CoMeCT (101136531), PIPELINE (101155825) and PROACT EU-Response (101156304) projects, which were funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.