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 the currently identified and emerging priority areas for government, ADR Wales has created a Ymateb work stream to monitor, evaluate, and research the impacts of major societal challenges over time and across generations for the whole population.
Understanding a range of societal challenges identified by and informing government and services, and improving people’s lives, are the focus of our work stream, with an initial emphasis on both the direct and indirect harms arising from the pandemic at a national scale. With broader interests in population health, inequities and inequalities in access, experiences and outcomes and wider societal recovery.
Priorities
Continuing to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and societal recovery has been a focus of our work stream. We will study harms arising from COVID-19 infections, including hospitalisations, reinfection rates, and other adverse outcomes. Associated inequalities arising from the pandemic will be evaluated, including access to services or delays, any associated risks, and the indirect harm from pressures on the health and social care system. We will look at harms arising from population-level health protection measures, such as educational, psychological, and isolation harms from shielding and other measures.
The Ymateb team will then identify emerging priority areas to generate timely, policy‑relevant insights for Wales. The team works with research partners across the UK and contributes to a wide range of multidisciplinary projects. Anticipated areas of work will utilise linked health and administrative data to conduct analyses relating to health, education, and equity across the population of Wales, including those with protected characteristics. Findings will be shared with policymakers and public health experts to support evidence‑informed decision‑making.
We also develop research-ready data assets (RRDAs) and reproducible research pipelines that will serve, in the longer term, to monitor, evaluate, and research the impacts of other major societal challenges that arise across 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 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 across the UK, aiding the 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, looking at the mediating factors in inequalities following COVID-19.
Long COVID – What is the effect on inequalities within society?
This project will examine the prevalence and incidence of long-term COVID-19 effects in Wales, with the aim of identifying whether these effects vary across 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 usability of the data for future research.
Patients’ interaction with primary care in Wales
This project creates a highquality, researchready data asset of primary care records for the Welsh population by identifying GP transfers and removing duplicates. Using this dataset, we investigate how patient interactions (e.g., face-to-face, remote, and other types of consultations) changed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic compared with pre-pandemic patterns. The work also assesses how these shifts affected equality and equity of access to primary care, service utilisation, and potential health outcomes.
ADR UK & CD3 (Cancer Data Driven Detection) programme collaboration
This project showcases the SAIL Databank as a key usecase for the ADR UK–CD3 partnership by demonstrating how linked administrative and health data can support cancer research. Reports have been published that illustrate the potential of combining SAIL’s administrative data with other population-scale anonymised datasets to develop use-case examples, such as cancer-specific analyses or multifactorial risk models, and to highlight opportunities to advance cancer research through improved data linkage.
Publications
Journal Article: Creating a Research-Ready Data Asset version of primary care data for Wales and investigating the impact of COVID-19 on utilisation of primary care services
We developed an efficient Research-Ready Data Asset (RRDA) for the Welsh Longitudinal General Practice (WLGP) data within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank to standardise curation, enhance reproducibility, and facilitate research on primary care trends. Using this, we investigated primary care activity trends during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data Insight: Exploring cancer inequalities in Wales through linked administrative data
The primary aim of this study was to assess the feasibility of linking cancer service data, including screening and diagnosis records, with additional administrative data within the SAIL Databank, with a particular focus on the 2021 Census. Key objectives were to provide an overview of the number of individuals available for study by linking data from multiple sources and to assess the time periods covered by data relating to cancer screening and diagnosis, demographic and health information.
Data Explained: Suspected Cancer Pathway Monthly (SCPM)
This Data Explained summarises the Suspected Cancer Pathway (Monthly (SCPM)) data. This output is intended to help guide users interested in this data for the first time, and future use of the data within the SAIL Databank towards research delivery and to provide feedback into future data source development and documentation.