UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration: an interdisciplinary platform integrating longitudinal study data with participants’ health, administrative and environmental data

Abstract:

The UK has a wonderful tradition of collecting rich longitudinal data from participant volunteers through longitudinal studies – these can include life-long follow-up, occupational studies and biobanks. UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (UK LLC) has been established as the national Trusted Research Environment for record linkage in longitudinal research. We host data from over 20 partner studies, including many of the UK’s premier longitudinal studies. We have systematically linked >400,000 participants to comprehensive health records and are now linking HMRC and DWP tax, employment and benefit records. Environmental and neighbourhood/property data are linked to participants residence. All these data are available in a single environment, accessible through a single application form and are currently free to access for public benefit research.

In this talk, Andy will outline the UK LLC resource, its potential and summarise how to access the data.

Biography

Andy’s speciality is in the design and delivery of the data and governance infrastructure needed for linking participants in longitudinal studies with routine records to augment cohort study databanks. He is Director of the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration (https://ukllc.ac.uk).

UK LLC is the national trusted research environment for longitudinal population studies, which provides record linkage and secure analysis services to many UK studies and provides an efficient and secure route for researchers to access complex integrated data. Andy is particularly interested in how increased use of population data in this way can bolster inclusivity within longitudinal research and drive research equity.

Andy is also co-lead for HDR UK’s Trust and Transparency theme of activity. With co-lead Cassie Smith and the team, Andy is working to help facilitate the development of an efficient governance framework for UK population data science, which has an interdisciplinary approach and ensures the co-involvement of the public across all activities.

Within this, Andy and the UK LLC are contributing to the HDR UK Social & Environmental Determinants of Health driver programme, which is developing secure system-wide approaches to integrating environmental exposure data with health data to help inform investigations into cross-cutting questions such as the role of air quality and noise on health and wellbeing outcomes.

Organiser

This event is organised by HDR UK South-West Training Lead, Yinghui Wei (y.wei3@exeter.ac.uk).

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