We’ve reached an important milestone for ALSPAC - primary care (GP) data are available for thousands of our participants.
We have worked with more than 100 GP surgeries in the Bristol area to obtain primary care records for participants who consented to ALSPAC linking to their health records:
• Over 11,000 original parents
• Over 11,500 original ALSPAC participants
• Nearly 2,000 of the next generation
Primary care data provide a valuable long-term picture of health, including diagnoses, symptoms and treatments that may not be captured in hospital records.
Researchers will be able to use these data alongside the wealth of information our participants have provided through questionnaires and clinics, as well as other linked health data and biological samples.
Achieving primary care linkage on this scale is a real achievement marking an invaluable relationship between participants and the study. This has involved establishing data-sharing arrangements with more than 100 individual GP practices and records are backdated with some spanning back to the 1990s.
A huge thank you to our participants for their continued support, and to the GP practices and University Governance colleagues who have worked with us to make this possible.
Get in touch with us at alspac-data@bristol.ac.uk with any questions.