ADR Wales
This year has seen the ADR Wales team continue to assist the data science community in overcoming barriers, with the common goal of producing insightful research delivered in a safe, secure, and ethical manner.
Producing insightful research that can inform policy has always been at the heart of decision-making at ADR Wales. The ADR Wales Programme of Work and its projects continue to show how high-quality, linked data research can contribute to tackling some of society’s most pressing challenges, from climate change to homelessness to health and wellbeing. Increasingly, the team’s expertise is called upon to guide practice, inform policy and deliver guidance that increases the awareness and appetite for data linkage analysis within academic groups and government departments.
ADR Wales’ thematic areas have produced analysis which is directly informing the policy landscape in Wales. In particular, ADR Wales’ work supporting data sharing best practice has been acknowledged in several reports including Delivering Justice for Wales: 2024, the Welsh Government Digital Strategy and the Office for Statistics Regulation Analytical leadership: Achieving better outcomes for citizens.
This year saw SAIL Databank receive a Queen’s Anniversary Prize in recognition of the team’s work harnessing public data to improve population health and wellbeing. Meanwhile, ADR Wales has led on the development of a reproducible analytical pipeline for data transfer from the Welsh Government into the SAIL Databank. This has improved the efficiency of data preparation and transfer, leading to higher-quality administrative data being available for research.
Knowledge sharing remains a priority for ADR Wales. This year has seen the launch of its training and capacity building offering, Datacise Open Learning, which provides a comprehensive platform to enhance research capability.
The ADR Wales research teams are delighted to have welcomed five interns as part of the ADR UK-supported Population Data Science Summer Internship. The summer interns benefitted from working on a live research project with policy-relevant outputs, while gaining hands-on exposure to the role and skillset of a data analyst.
ADR Wales continues to support and work alongside large-scale investments that have been borne out of the expertise and learnings of the team. For example, the Administrative Data | Agricultural Research Collection (AD|ARC) project continues to pave the way for UK-wide practices to create a truly pan-UK research project. ADR Wales is also a core partner in the successful Ministry of Justice Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD) programme, with an additional £800,000 secured to carry on this work in Wales from 2024-2025.
I am proud of the efforts of the ADR Wales team as we reflect on the achievements of the past year. We have worked together as a team to deliver significant research outcomes and collaborated to shape processes that enhance the reuse of data.
Our findings, and the processes that we have helped to create and deliver, continue to be insightful and informative, paving the way for greater awareness among peers about the potential of administrative data. Our work informs policies and inspires others, and we are committed to continuing these efforts.
As we reflect on our recent achievements, it’s important to acknowledge the incredible dedication and hard work of our multi-disciplinary team. The ADR Wales team has consistently delivered insightful, academically sound research that has not only advanced our field but also enhanced our reputation.
Our accomplishments are a foundation that we continually build upon and it is imperative that we continue to support the efforts of our research and operational teams, fostering an environment where innovation thrives. By maintaining our commitment to excellence and providing the necessary resources and support, we will ensure that the research carried out by, and facilitated by our team, remains insightful, informative and conducted in a safe and ethical manner.
Active travel to school in Wales
Active travel to school – such as walking and cycling – not only reduces carbon emissions and air pollution, but also contributes to a wide range of health benefits. The ‘potential’ for active travel to school across Wales is poorly understood – yet this understanding is vital to informing policy and practice aimed at increasing this type of travel.
Led by Samantha Turner and Professor Richard Fry, this cross-cutting project spans several of ADR Wales’ thematic areas of work around equality, health and climate change. It is set to provide crucial insights to help inform education, policy and active travel infrastructure.
Guided by ongoing stakeholder engagement, the project utilises geospatial techniques to calculate shortest network distances for all residences to all schools within 50km in Wales. Distances will be de-identified and linked to an anonymised cohort of approximately 375,000 children attending a state school in Wales.
Initially, ‘potential’ for active travel to school estimates will be based on distance alone, but over time refinements will account for:
- age-group
- terrain
- urban and rural areas
- safe-routes
- the built environment
- socio-economic status.
This novel data linkage will help to identify whether disparities exist in distance from home to nearest school, and distance to attended school. The research will also explore whether certain socio-demographic groups have an increased likelihood of travelling to schools beyond their nearest age-appropriate school.
The project will be supported by Ranjith Kumar, who has joined the team as part of the Population Data Science Summer Internship Programme for 2024. Ranjith’s analysis will seek to understand the distances at which children are more likely to actively travel to school by gender, age, urban or rural area, area-level deprivation and local authority.
These projects’ findings will inform policy and planning around active travel to school, to ensure appropriate interventions are prioritised for schools and communities where need is greatest.
Linking police domestic abuse data and health data in South Wales
Exposure to domestic abuse can lead to long-term negative impacts on a victim's physical and psychological wellbeing. In a recent study published in The Lancet, the ADR Wales Early Years team examined how linking health and police data could provide early indicators to help safeguard victims of domestic abuse.
The study analysed de-identified data from residents of South Wales who were victims of domestic abuse resulting in a Public Protection Notification (PPN) submission between 2015 and 2020 (this is a document that records safeguarding concerns about adults or children). The team linked this data with de-identified health records held within the SAIL Databank, to examine experiences within 12 months of the PPN.
Of the 8,709 people who experienced domestic abuse, 71.8% were women, however those aged 0-9 years were more likely to be boys. Within a year of experiencing abuse, 3,544 of the victims had negative outcomes, such as an A&E admission, while there were 48 deaths.
The team found that certain factors increased the likelihood of negative outcomes. These included being younger, having multiple incidents of abuse, getting injured during the abuse, being assessed as high-risk, or being pregnant. Pregnant victims, in particular, faced more risks, which affected their own health and the health of their babies.
The team’s findings show the value of cross-agency data linkage and how the identification of harmful patterns could lead to earlier interventions for the victims of domestic abuse.
School-based interventions to prevent youth homelessness
In 2022/23, over 2,300 children and young people aged 16-24 years old approached local authorities in Wales for help with homelessness. Schools potentially play a pivotal role in engaging with children before they reach this crisis point and seek out local authority assistance. ADR Wales Housing and Homelessness leads Professor Peter Mackie and Dr Ian Thomas are working alongside Welsh charity Llamau to explore the impact of their pioneering school-based youth homelessness intervention. Known as Upstream Cymru, the purpose of the intervention is to identify and engage with children at risk of becoming homeless.
Upstream Cymru starts with a screening tool completed in school by students aged 11 to 16 years old. Whilst the primary purpose of the screening is to identify the risk of homelessness, it also includes questions on educational disengagement, resilience and wellbeing.
The ADR Wales team are analysing Upstream Cymru data to better understand the profile of pupils at risk of youth homelessness in Wales, and the association of different levels of risk with educational disengagement, resilience, and wellbeing.
Peter and Ian are working internationally with researchers and practitioners in Australia, North America and Europe, to share their knowledge and experiences in the use of ‘Upstream-type’ interventions.
The project will be supported by added insight from Lauren Hill, who has joined the team as part of the Population Data Science Summer Internship Programme for 2024. Lauren’s analysis seeks to provide insights on risk of homelessness among pupils in Wales and changes in the risk of homelessness over time.
About ADR Wales
ADR Wales unites specialists from Swansea University Medical School and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) at Cardiff University with statisticians, data scientists and social researchers from the Welsh Government. The cutting-edge data analysis techniques and research excellence developed, along with the world-renowned SAIL (Secure Anonymised Information Linkage) Databank – which is an accredited processor under the 2017 Digital Economy Act – allow the delivery of robust, secure and informative research.