COALESCE - Capacity and capability Of UK-wide Analysts to LEverage health data at Scale using COVID-19 as an Exemplar

Project summary:

COALESCE is jointly led by researchers from Scotland's EAVE II project and the British Heart Foundation's Data Science Centre. The project team includes members from 14 institutions across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as an active Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) group.

This study’s primary aim is to provide both the UK and the devolved governments (Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) with the information necessary to actionably improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake and coverage. COALESCE’s wider-reaching aim, however, is to further develop analytical processes and procedures that will allow for future UK-wide COVID-19 studies. It’s team also hope that, in time (and subject to permissions) these methods will also be able to facilitate other urgent, non-COVID-19 UK-wide research.

To do this, the COALESCE team are working towards:

  • Identifying and describing which groups of people in the UK, and each of the four nations, are sub-optimally vaccinated.
  • Understanding and characterising what serious outcomes of infection, such as COVID-19 related hospital admissions, critical care unit admissions and deaths, among people who are sub-optimally vaccinated.
  • Considering the possible policy and healthcare implications of our results for each nation and the UK as a whole.

The project is using data acquired from the CVD-COVID-UK/ COVID-IMPACT cohort in England, data accessed through the EAVE II study in Scotland, Welsh data from the SAIL Databank and access Northern Irish data through the Honest Broker Service.

Funders

Health Data Research UK

Leader researcher:

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh and Professor Cathy Sudlow

Lead institution:

Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh

Vaccine type:

AstraZeneca
Moderna
Pfizer

Website:

Find out more about COALESCE on the Usher Institute website