Phase 1 COVID-19 Longitudinal Health and Wealth - National Core Study (Phase 1 LHW-NCS)

The Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study will improve understanding of COVID-19 infection risk factors, examine the physical and mental health consequences of asymptomatic to hospitalised cases, and assess the impact of population scale mitigation policy. We will unite distinct, but complementary, longitudinal studies already engaged in COVID-19 research, including UK representative population and hospitalised cohorts, household panel surveys, and national primary care registries. These will be enriched with health and administrative data linkage. Linkage, self-reporting and repeat serological assessment will allow greater precision in case assignment. This collective resource will be mined by a consortium of experienced analysts linked to these resources to provide rapid answers to existing and emerging priority research questions. These include physical and mental health impacts and socioeconomic adversity of those who have had COVID-19 infection, evolving impacts on health and socioeconomic inequalities, and uptake, safety and effectiveness of vaccination and determinants of responses. Our outputs will include briefing notes as well as scientific reports in order to optimise policy influence. Phase 1 funding will: 1. Establish a centralised, responsive resource linking data assets from a diverse range of longitudinal population studies with health, social and environmental records, with harmonised governance for processing and research interrogation. 2. Inform population health and social policy by providing evidence, both proactively and in response to customers, of the medium to long term consequences of infection, and of policies to control the pandemic 3. Establish a cadre of highly skilled big data scientists