Utah DCC to Help Lead Data and Analytics for National Study of Childhood Viral Infections Utah DCC to Help Lead Data and Analytics for National Study of Childhood Viral Infections
Oct 20, 2026
The University of Utah Data Coordinating Center (Utah DCC), in collaboration with University of Colorado, will serve as the Data and Analytics Coordinating Center (DACC) for the Systematic Phenotyping and Endotyping in Viral Infections in the Young Lung (SPIN VINYL) Consortium. The consortium is expected to receive up to $52 million in National Institutes of Health funding to study why viral respiratory infections affect children differently.
The consortium is jointly led by the DACC and the Clinical Coordinating Center (CCC), composed of the University of Michigan, University of California San Francisco, and University of Arkansas.
SPIN VINYL is a multidisciplinary research group studying why some children experience severe illness from viral respiratory infections and develop long-term health problems, while others recover without lasting complications. Ten hospitals across the country will enroll 1,500 infants hospitalized with viral lower respiratory tract infections, along with control populations, and follow participants over five years.
The research will focus on viral lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs), including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus (RV), influenza, and SARS-CoV-2. Researchers will investigate how the body’s response to these infections is influenced by a combination of biological, environmental, microbial, and social factors.
While many children recover from viral respiratory infections, some experience recurrent wheezing, develop asthma, or experience other changes that can affect health and development over time. The study seeks to identify the factors that may help explain these differences.
Looking Beyond the Initial Infection
Researchers will examine the respiratory microbiome—the community of microorganisms living in the respiratory tract—as well as host immune responses and other molecular characteristics. By comparing children who experience persistent problems with those who recover more fully, investigators hope to identify biological patterns associated with susceptibility and resilience.
The study will also examine whether factors such as vaccination, repeated viral infections, and bacterial co-infections are associated with the severity of acute illness or later health outcomes.
Potential outcomes of interest include the severity of the initial respiratory infection, emergency department and hospital utilization, intensive care admission, need for mechanical ventilation, hospital length of stay, respiratory complications, development or control of asthma, physical activity, and neurocognitive development.
Understanding the Environment Around the Child
Researchers will also evaluate environmental exposures including tobacco smoke, household allergens, fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5), and ozone. These exposures will be studied alongside social determinants of health and differences between rural and urban communities.
This approach will allow investigators to examine whether environmental and social factors influence the body’s inflammatory response, how quickly a virus is cleared, how the respiratory microbiome changes following infection, and the likelihood of developing long-term respiratory or other health complications.
The study’s focus on both rural and urban populations may provide additional insight into how differences in environment, health care access, vaccination patterns, and social circumstances contribute to children’s recovery following viral LRTI.
The Role of the Data and Analytics Coordinating Center
Together, the University of Utah and the University of Colorado will support the DACC’s work to integrate information collected across the study and analyze the complex relationships among viral infection, host biology, the microbiome, environmental exposures, social determinants of health, and long-term outcomes.
“SPIN VINYL brings together the scale, depth, and national diversity needed to understand why children experience such different paths after the same type of viral respiratory infection,” said Kevin Watt, MD, PhD, contact principal investigator for the Data and Analytics Coordinating Center.
“By integrating detailed clinical information with biologic, environmental, and long-term outcome data, we aim to identify the patterns that can help clinicians better predict recovery and ultimately tailor prevention and care for the children at greatest risk.”
Kevin Watt, MD, PhD. Photo credit: Kristan Jacobsen Photography / University of Utah Health.
By bringing data coordination and statistical expertise to the collaboration, the Utah DCC will help integrate information collected across the study and support researchers in analyzing the complex relationships among viral infection, host biology, the microbiome, environmental exposures, social determinants of health, and long-term outcomes.
A Multidisciplinary Approach to Pediatric Respiratory Health
This multidisciplinary approach is central to the study’s goal of understanding pediatric viral respiratory disease as more than an isolated episode of acute illness. An additional goal of SPIN VINYL is to create a robust data and specimen biorepository that can serve as a resource for investigators around the world. By connecting what happens during a child’s infection with biological and environmental factors measured over time, researchers hope to identify children who may be at increased risk for long-term complications and better understand the mechanisms underlying recovery and resilience.
As part of the DACC’s work, the University of Colorado will lead development of the VINYLome, a public-facing web portal modeled after the COVIDome that will provide an inventory of available data and specimens. The research could provide new insight into how viral respiratory infections shape children’s health beyond the initial illness and help establish a foundation for future approaches to identifying, monitoring, and potentially preventing long-term complications.
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Utah DCC
Based at the University of Utah, the Utah Data Coordinating Center is a full-service Academic Research Organization that supports investigators and sponsors across academic, government, and industry research. The Utah DCC specializes in study design and development, data management and statistics, project management, research technology and informatics, regulatory affairs and quality assurance, and medical monitoring. The Utah DCC has more than two decades of experience supporting complex multicenter studies and has contributed to national research networks spanning pediatric emergency medicine, pediatric critical care, neurology, trauma, and other areas of medicine.
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