Your family can help researchers find new ways to outsmart the flu.
Participants are needed for the Seattle Flu Study, a collaboration between the Brotman Baty Institute, UW Medicine, Fred Hutch, and Seattle Children’s.
If you're interested, here's the link and here's how it works. Potential participants (families with three or more members):
- Answer questions about their household using an electronic questionnaire that takes about 5 minutes.
- Send swabs of each person’s nose (it’s quick and painless).
- Throughout flu season, answer a few questions a week about any flu symptoms from members of the household.
- If someone in the household gets flulike symptoms, take a home flu test and additional nose swabs.
The data will be used for an interactive Flu Map to show how the flu is moving through the city on a neighborhood level.
Researchers point out that only 10 to 20% of people with flulike symptoms actually have influenza. As part of the flu study, kiosks will be situated around town where people get a flu-test result in as little as 15 minutes.
The flu is off to an early start in Washington and elsewhere, and is hitting kids hard. Organizers of the Seattle Flu Study need people to enroll before it hits here.
Related: Seattle family flu-shot guide, 2019
