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.
Robustness of Free School Meals (FSM) indicator as a measure of socio-economic circumstances over time
With changes to eligibility rules and use of Free School Meals (FSM) over time how reliable does FSM continue to play as an indicator of socio-economic circumstances? This project will utilise FSM data collected in schools, and Census data, building on previous work within the ADR-Wales Education Research Theme, that has considered associations between FSM and other socio-economic indicators, for example from the Millenium Cohort Study and Census 2011 data.
Curriculum change and the impact on learner outcomes
The Foundation Phase (FP) was fully rolled out in 2010/11, which means the first full cohort completed their GCSEs in 2020/21. However, as this was during the COVID-19 pandemic analysis needs to carefully consider what impact the FP has had on later outcomes. The new Curriculum for Wales was rolled out in 2022 and provides a significant change to systems and processes in Wales, including changes to examinations and assessment. It is important that education data is used to explore the implementation and long-term impact of these significant reforms.
Right place, right time, right support: exploring additional learning needs provision and educational outcomes in Wales
Understanding how additional learning needs provision supports the educational outcomes of those with health conditions is important for planning and implementing an effective support system. Research suggests that children with health conditions are more likely to experience negative education outcomes, including more exclusions, lower attendance, and poorer attainment. However, little is known about the importance of timing and implementation of support on educational outcomes.
Severe Multiple Disadvantage among young people in Wales
Following on from work already carried out in England and Scotland, this project provides evidence on the extent and timing of Severe Multiple Disadvantage (SMD). Our analysis investigates the extent of overlap between the severe disadvantages of homelessness, mental health issues, substance use, and alcohol dependency. We will follow-up a cohort of young people from their 16th birthday, until they turn 25 years old, to explore at what age severe disadvantages are experienced, and the extent of their overlap.
Upstream Data Lab
Upstream is a school-based intervention, aimed at identifying and working with young people most at risk of homelessness before they reach crisis-point. Our thematic area has a long-standing collaboration with Llamau, a youth homelessness charity in Wales who run the Welsh version of Upstream (‘Upstream Cymru’). We have worked to improve the screening tool used by Upstream to collect information needed to support young people, as well as analysing Upstream Cymru screening data to generate evidence on youth homelessness in Wales.
As Upstream has now been adopted in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, we will explore UK-level analysis across devolved nations. This project will also explore whether screening tool data linked to other administrative data can help evaluate the impact of Upstream services on young people’s outcomes.
Homewards-Newport City Council collaboration
Homewards is a five-year UK wide programme launched by The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales, with the aim of preventing homelessness. Newport is one of six flagship locations in the UK in which Homewards operate. One key area that Homewards focus on is harnessing data to drive policy and practice changes, which is where the ADR-Wales housing and homelessness team are contributing. Newport City Council have provided the ADR-Wales team with data about the support they provide to people experiencing homelessness. Our analysis will focus on interactions with public and council services prior to seeking support for homelessness, with the aim of informing future prevention schemes.
Distances children live from school and the potential for active/sustainable travel among school aged children in Wales
This project will examine the distances children in Wales live from their attended and nearest schools to inform active and sustainable transport policies and interventions. We will link these distances to self-reported travel behaviours in the National Survey for Wales (NSW) and the School Health Research Network (SHRN) to define walkable and cyclable thresholds for primary and secondary school–aged children. Future work will incorporate environmental characteristics, such as traffic, the built environment, and safety, to develop a more realistic understanding of children’s ability to walk or cycle to school in Wales and the potential barriers they face.
Socio-demographic, health, educational and environment characteristics of high-, medium- and low- risk flood communities in Wales over time
This project will link open-source flood risk data at the household level to administrative, health and environmental data in the SAIL databank to explore the health and socio-demographic profiles of people living in low-, medium- and high-risk flood areas, and how these profiles have changed overtime.
Enhancing understanding of populations inequalities in Wales
This work will use existing and new health, demographic and administrative data to characterise the population of Wales into socio-economic, marginalised and vulnerable groups of individuals to aid future understanding of population inequalities in Wales.
Examining GP registrations and activity by migrant status across Wales, UK
This project seeks to explore using routinely collected administrative, health, and survey data to support the development of the Welsh Government’s Migrant Integration Framework. This research aims to answer the following research questions:
1) What is the percentage of GP registrations in Wales at a given point in the year that are associated with migrants?
2) What is the percentage of appointments in Wales in a given year that are attended by migrants?
3) Whether these figures vary according to the length of time migrants are resident in the UK?
Accessibility to primary healthcare across Wales, UK
This study aims to assist Rural Health Care for Wales (RHCW) with their current research into health inequalities across rural areas of Wales, particularly the most sparsely populated Mid Wales region. Research questions posed by RHCW relates to distances travelled to GP surgeries in rural areas. Specifically, do individuals use their nearest GP surgeries in rural areas, and how far do people travel to attend their GP surgeries in rural areas, and how does this compare to patients registered at urban-based GP surgeries.
EU Settlement Scheme Data Linkage Project
The EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) Data Linkage Project is an ADR Wales initiative born out of the need to improve the evidence base on EU citizens in Wales who are part of the EU Settlement Scheme. It aims to anonymously link Home Office data with other data already held within the SAIL Databank, enabling researchers and policymakers to better understand the experiences of EU citizens with Settled Status, and therefore to develop better informed policy and services that address the needs of this potentially vulnerable population.
A crucial element of understanding the experiences of EU citizens with Settled Status in Wales is understanding how their experiences differ from those of the rest of the population. The wealth of de-identified data in the SAIL Databank provides the opportunity to develop a closely matched control group of British citizens with similar characteristics. This could help explore whether or not EU citizens with Settled Status have different experiences to British citizens.
Impact of Welsh Government data
This project seeks to investigate the impact of research using Welsh Government microdata in Trusted Research Environments, and to develop and test approaches for capturing and maximising the impact of such research.
Young people and administrative data
This project will explore young people’s awareness of how administrative data (specifically education data) relating to them is being used for research purposes and gather their views on the use of their data in linked data research. The project will gauge young people’s knowledge and understanding of data collection processes and provide an opportunity for a co-produced piece of research to be designed through collaborative and innovative practices.
Early years support for vulnerable children
This project aims to understand what works to support vulnerable children, such as those experiencing domestic violence, adverse childhood conditions or children who are looked after or under child protection measures, with a view to supporting these children during their early years.