Data linkage for evaluating maternal, household and social influences on childhood health service use and outcomes in children born preterm. (360G-Wellcome-103975_A_14_Z)

The potential for linkage between health and non-health administrative data sources provides new opportunities for detailed evaluation of health service use trajectories and their outcomes on a population-level. This has important implications for improving services for children who were born preterm: rates of preterm birth are increasing, children born preterm use high levels of health services and are at increased risk of poor short- and long-term outcomes (in health and education) compared wi th their term peers. This fellowship aims to establish how nationally representative, population-level administrative data can be used to identify and measure determinants of variation in service use and outcomes for children born preterm by linking information on maternal, household and social environments. The goals of this research are to: quantify the burden of preterm birth (for mothers and babies) in the first year following birth using English and Canadian electronic healthcare data (Ph ase 1); identify and measure household determinants of service use in children aged 1-10 who were born preterm, using primary and secondary care data (Phase 2); evaluate determinants of educational achievement in adolescents aged 11-15 who were born preterm by linking health and education data sources with geographical information on social environment (Phase 3).