Our ongoing collaborations include:

1. PEARL (The Project to Enhance ALSPAC through Record Linkage)

Funded by Wellcome (£1.8m 2009-2018, led by John Macleod)

The original PEARL project involved securing the legal basis for the linkage of the health and social administrative records of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) index participants, and securing the data extracts for the ALSPAC study. The award also supported the development of ALSPAC’s linkage governance structure, including the ISO27001 accredited PEARL Data Safe Haven, and ALSPAC’s UK Secure eResearch Platform – a secure research environment developed by the MRC Wales Farr Institute.

2. Cohorts as Platforms for Mental Health (CaPMH)

This project aims to develop unparalleled capacity to consider early life in the development of mental health and illness. A collaboration of two of the world’s leading birth cohorts, ALSPAC and Born in Bradford, CaPMH aims to form an intergenerational, integrated resource for mental health research, encompassing primary care record linkage and several innovative electronic methods of gathering key data.

3. Twins UK record linkage

The PEARL team will be using their methodological, technological and governance expertise to provide safe and high quality record linkage to the Twins UK cohort, which has close to 14,000 identical and non-identical twins from across the UK. Both primary and secondary care NHS records from across the UK will be included in the project, as will infrastructure to link natural environment records to study participants.

4. Unicorn resource for asthma research

The Unicorn project will integrate the STELAR (Study Team for Early Life Asthma Research) consortium of five birth cohorts (ALSPAC, SEATON, MAAS, Ashford and Isle of Wight) that study asthma and allergies with patient cohorts with large numbers of phenotyped patients with asthma to form a data management and analysis platform with unique potential to advance knowledge and treatment of asthma.

 

Completed PEARL projects:

 

Enhancing Environmental data Resources in Cohort Studies: ALSPAC exemplar (ERICA)

Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and Medical Research Council (MRC), (~£100k, 2017-2018, led by Andy Boyd).

ERICA established generalisable mechanisms for linking natural environment records into longitudinal population databanks established by cohort studies. With partners at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU, Imperial University) and the Earth Observation Science Group (Leicester University) we scoped data science and governance issues relating to linking spatial data. We conducted an exemplar study evaluating the association of in utero and early life NO2 exposure and later health outcomes.

Alcohol Misuse Electronic Longitudinal Alcohol Study in Communities (ELASTiC)

The ELASTiC project studied pathways into alcohol use and misuse, and evaluated the impact of alcohol misuse on health and wellbeing in communities. The PEARL team linked longitudinal data collected by the ALSPAC cohort study with the secondary care records of consenting ALSPAC participants to enable analyses of varying definitions of alcohol use on health outcomes.