The new Healthy Households Project, funded by ADR UK, is set to transform how researchers analyse household data in the UK.
Led by Dr Richard Fry, Professor of Environment and Health at Population Data Science at Swansea University and ADR Wales themeatic lead, this project aims to create a comprehensive dataset linking housing data with administrative and health data for England, Scotland, and Wales.
The project team will also develop tools to support researchers using this data. This will enable new, policy-relevant insights into the make-up of households and the circumstances they experience.
The composition of households can affect the social, economic, and health outcomes of those who live in them. In particular, the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have highlighted the impact of circumstances such as overcrowding on physical and mental health and education. However, it is currently not possible for researchers to analyse households within administrative and health population datasets.
This project aims to address this challenge using Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) – unique identifiers given to every addressable location in the UK. Encrypting or coding these unique numbers provides a secure way to link de-identified information about people sharing the same household, and to link this to other address level data. This will enable research that recognises the make-up and circumstances of individual households while investigating the outcomes experienced by household members.
Collaborating on the project alongside Swansea University are the University of Edinburgh, Queen Mary University of London and Endeavour Health Charitable Trust. The project will bring together key data sources, including GP patient registration and clinical data, Unique Property Reference Numbers, and address-based housing datasets from the Valuation Office Agency held by ONS and the publically available Energy Performance Certificate Register.
Professor Richard Fry, said, “The potential impact of this project is huge. By exploring household circumstances such as overcrowding and composition, researchers can better understand their implications for health, education, and socio-economic outcomes. Government bodies working with health and social care will also benefit from insights at the household level, which will inform service planning and evaluation.”
A research-ready dataset created by this project will be available for accredited researchers to apply to access the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank, alongside synthetic data from North East London and methods deployed in the Scottish National Safe Haven. Methods for creating a household unit of analysis using patient registration data will be made available on GitHub for deployment in trusted research environments like Integrated Data Service, as data governance allows.
For more information and updates on this project, visit the ADR UK website.