Virus Watch is a research study of COVID-19 led by the Public Health Data Science team University College London in conjunction with the NHS, Doctors of The World and the Race Equality Foundation.
This household study aims to identify how the virus spreads in our community and how to stop it. Virus Watch has generated a wide range of evidence to inform COVID policy and decision-making. We have collected over 1 billion data points resulting in diverse interdisciplinary publications in behavioural science, occupational health, geospatial informatics and housing policy.
We have undertaken a wide range of research on tuberculosis, but have expertise in understanding the burden of disease in socially excluded groups and the development and evaluation of interventions to improve their outcomes.
We co-developed and validated a probabilistic data linkage system that can reduce data linkage errors in administrative health data. Using this newly validated methodology we evaluated global tuberculosis screening programmes for people on the move and investigated the cost effectiveness of diagnosing and managing hard to reach individuals with active tuberculosis.
We led the world’s first randomized controlled trial comparing smartphone-based Video Supported Care (VSC) and directly observed treatment (DOT) to improve treatment outcomes for socially excluded groups.
Results from our study examining smartphone-based Video Supported Care. Each row represents one patient. Each dot represents one scheduled treatment observation day. Observed (black) and unobserved (grey) scheduled doses are shown for each patient in the study through the course of follow-up. Patients are ordered according to their length of treatment time remaining after randomisation
We undertook a cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of peer educators on the uptake of mobile X-ray tuberculosis screening at homeless hostels.
Our work has resulted in manuscripts published in The Lancet and The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Rob Aldridge received prizes in two highly competitive awards as a result of this work, including: The Lancet Young Investigator prize at the Academy of Medical Sciences Spring Meeting; and UCL’s Excellence in Health Research prize.
We used NHS data of patients with a positive Covid-19 test, who died hospitals in England from March 1 to April 21 this year – which included data on age, region and ethnicity.
Our findings support an urgent need to take action to reduce the risk of death from Covid-19 for BAME groups. Actions to reduce these inequities include ensuring an adequate income for everyone so that low paid and zero-hours contract workers can afford to follow social distancing recommendations, reducing occupational risks such as ensuring adequate PPE, reducing barriers to accessing healthcare and providing culturally and linguistically appropriate public health communications.
Our results provide evidence that HCoV infection in England is most intense in winter, but that there is a small amount of ongoing transmission during summer periods. We found some evidence of immunity against homologous reinfection.
We are part of the UCL Commission on Migration and Health. Migration is one of the most important public health issues facing the world today. International and internal migration is increasing, triggered by displacement of large numbers of people due to conflict, natural disasters, search for safety, and economic opportunities. A well considered and humane policy course offers extraordinary opportunities to make major gains in health and wellbeing. We are conducting the Million Migrant Study as part of our work in this area, which will create a population-based cohort study to describe the hospital-based healthcare and mortality outcomes of 1.5 million non-European Union (EU) migrants and refugees in England.
The British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal) are among the largest and most detailed studies of sexual behaviour to have been undertaken anywhere in the world. Their data have been used extensively to improve understanding of sexual behaviour and to guide sexual and reproductive health policy and practice. Our group is leading on data linkage in Natsal-4 where all Natsal-4 participants will be invited to consent to link their survey and biological data to their health records and other routinely-collected data. Linking these records creates opportunities to expand the range of data we have to answer complex research questions in ways that have not previously been possible.
Homeless Hospital Discharge Schemes that has brought together data on over 100,000 homeless people from across England to understand their health outcomes after discharge from hospital. Our study established that one in three people with experience of homeless admitted to hospital subsequently died from a health condition that our current medical knowledge and technology should have been able to prevent, if help was provided in a timely and appropriate manner. This research received extensive media coverage including an in depth piece on Channel 4 News and this work, and the corresponding economic evaluation has been used as the business case by several NHS trusts as the basis for commissioning intermediate care for people experiencing homelessness and informed the Mayor of London’s health vision for London.
ActEarly is a City Collaboratory approach to early promotion of good health and wellbeing. The project aims to create City Collaboratory testbeds to support the identification, implementation and evaluation of upstream interventions within a whole system city setting. Prevention of physical and mental ill-health will come from the cumulative effect of multiple system-wide interventions. Rather than scatter these interventions across many settings and evaluate single outcomes, we will test their collective impact across multiple outcomes with the goal of achieving a tipping point for better health. Our focus is on early life (ActEarly) in recognition of childhood and adolescence being such critical periods for influencing lifelong health and wellbeing.
