Overview
From the Covid-19 pandemic to climate change and the cost of living, modern society is facing unprecedented challenges, the impacts of which will be felt by generations to come. To address currently identified and new emerging priority areas for government, ADR Wales has created a Major Societal Challenges work stream, which will monitor, evaluate and research the impacts of major societal challenges over time and across generations for the whole population.
Covid-19 will be the initial focus of this work stream, with an early focus on the Pandemic | Administrative Data Research (PAND|AR) project. PAND|AR will focus on the five harms approach, looking closely at both the direct and indirect harms arising from Covid-19 pandemic on individuals, services and inequalities at a population-scale, and pandemic recovery.
Priorities
Covid-19 will be the initial focus of this work stream, with an early focus on the Pandemic | Administrative Data Research (PAND|AR) project. PAND|AR will focus on the five harms approach, looking closely at both the direct and indirect harms arising from Covid-19 pandemic on individuals, services and inequalities at a population-scale, and pandemic recovery. We will study harms arising from infections, such as hospitalisations, reinfection rates and other adverse outcomes following an infection from Covid-19. Associated inequalities arising from the Covid-19 pandemic will be evaluated, including access to services or delays and any associated risks, along with the indirect harm of pressures on the health and social care system. We will look at harms arising from population-level health protection measures such as educational harm, psychological harm and isolation from shielding and other measures.
We will look at the economic harms, such as unemployment and reduced business income arising from Covid-19 directly and population control measures, like lockdowns. We will look at the harms arising from the way Covid-19 has exacerbated existing or introduced new inequalities in our society, such as geographic and spatial inequalities, intersectional disadvantage, education inequalities exacerbated by Covid-19 and economic vulnerability. We will evaluate potential interventions and national approaches to recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, including the vaccination programme, associated uptake, safety, waning and adverse events that may arise from vaccination, and any potential inequalities in access to vaccinations that should receive more targeted interventions. Potential benefits arising from these interventions will be considered too.
We plan to develop a series of research ready data assets (RRDAs) and reproducible research pipelines that will serve, longer-term, to monitor, evaluate and research the impacts of other major societal challenges that arise across the generations.
Projects
Evaluation of the Covid-19 vaccination rollout programme in Wales, and across the UK
This project aims to provide evidence on the coverage and timeliness of Covid-19 vaccinations.
It will look at:
- Uptake disparities for Covid-19 and influenza vaccinations between 2020 and 2021.
- The risk of Covid-19 hospital admissions and deaths after Covid-19 autumn 2022 booster vaccinations.
- Associations with under-vaccination against Covid-19 in the summer of 2022 and subsequent risk of Covid-19 hospital admission and deaths.
- Trends in SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination in school staff, students, and their household members from 2020-2022 in Wales
Collectively, these questions will complement work taking place throughout the UK, which will aid monitoring and evaluation of vaccine equality.
Inequalities in severe health events following infection from Covid-19
This project will follow on from previous work that looked at health inequalities in Covid-19 deaths and hospital admissions in Wales. It will analyse admissions and deaths related to Covid-19 looking at what are the mediating factors for inequalities following Covid-19.
Covid-19 and Long Covid – What is the effect on inequalities within society?
This project will look at the prevalence and incidence of the long-term effects of Covid-19 in Wales with the aim of identifying if the effects vary across different population groups. The findings will provide evidence on the number of recorded cases of Long Covid in Wales, aiding understanding of the coding quality completeness and useability of data for future research.
Publications
Data Insight: Clinical coding and capture of Long COVID: a cohort study in Wales using linked health and demographic data
This Data Insight investigates clinical coding of Long COVID recorded in primary and secondary care for the population of Wales. It provides insight into the quality of this clinical coding and how it is used differently across primary care software systems. It also explores the completeness and usability of linked health and demographic data. Furthermore, this study provides a comprehensive characterisation of patients clinically diagnosed with Long COVID, aiming to build a deeper understanding of this relatively new condition.
Data Insight: Staff-pupil Covid-19 infection pathways in schools in Wales
This Data Insight explores the likelihood of pupils and staff testing positive for Covid-19 when there has been a positive case among staff, pupils and their households. It uses anonymised data on all staff, pupils and associated household contacts in Wales to understand the likely transmission pathways into and through educational settings.