Using data to improve public health: COVID-19 secondment

During my secondment with the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), I will conduct research examining the impact of long covid on employment and income disruption, as well as how COVID-19 has disproportionally affected some populations compared to others, reflecting and perpetuating existing UK health inequalities. To conduct this research, I will analyse data from CLS's four national longitudinal birth cohort studies: the 1958 National Child Development Study, the 1970 British Cohort Study, Next Steps and the Millennium Cohort Study. During the pandemic, CLS have conducted an additional COVID-19 survey, administered to participants of these birth cohorts as well as participants in the National Survey of Health and Development. The aim of this COVID-19 survey is to understand the economic, social and health impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, the extent to which the pandemic is widening or narrowing inequalities, and the lifelong factors which shape vulnerability and resilience to its effects. My role, as part of the multi-institutional National Core Studies Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing initiative, is to utilise these cohort data to conduct studies focusing on i) COVID-19 severity and employment/income disruption and ii) Socioeconomic, demographic and geospatial determinants of COVID-19 infections. Both studies draw together data from multiple UK population-based longitudinal studies and electronic health records. Such research is crucial given that both the COVID-19 virus and non-pharmaceutical interventions implemented in response have led to a drastic change in the daily lives of the UK population. Understanding how individual's economic, social and health related outcomes evolve has considerable policy importance, since the pandemic is not only an infectious disease crisis but also an economic and social crisis.