Using data to improve public health: COVID-19 secondment

This project will be delivered with colleagues from the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study (LHW NCS) and will focus on investigating the effect of COVID-19 on cancer and mental health of the population. It will use routine health data (electronic health records) from primary and secondary care. More specifically, the project will use platforms such as the NHS Digital Trusted Research Environment and OpenSAFELY, which link anonymised patient health records across different healthcare sectors, and make the data available for research in a way that is secure and transparent. The lead researcher on this project, Dr Lemanska from the University of Surrey, has already undertaken and published a study on the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on mental health. This research showed a dramatic drop in GP consultations for mental health during 2020, while the prescriptions system was more resilient and was not disrupted. The study discussed implications and recommendations for future pandemics in relation to switching to remote consultations and preventing backlogs in the NHS. This work led to a joint project with Public Health England (PHE) that compared the COVID-19-related disruption across healthcare systems including primary, out of hours and emergency care. The current research will contribute to the emerging picture regarding the wider healthcare implications of the COVID-19 crisis and in turn contribute to the national efforts in the fight against the pandemic. COVID-19 and lockdowns led to a shift in healthcare needs of patients. The pandemic has also affected the availability and readiness of NHS services to deliver healthcare and highlighted how difficult it can be to deliver healthcare under such challenging conditions. This project will build on Dr Lemanska's COVID-19 health disruption work. It will use linked electronic health records from different healthcare settings in the UK to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns on the delivery and outcomes of cancer care. Specifically, we will investigate how cancer screening and diagnostic testing was affected. For example, we plan to investigate prostate cancer and prostate-specific antigen blood tests which are used in primary and secondary care to detect cancer. In the area of mental health, we are interested in investigating the impact of COVID-19 on mental health. For example, we will look at how many people developed new mental health symptoms, new diagnoses, or needed new prescriptions for common mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, self-harm, sleep and eating disorders.