Background: Linking survey data to administrative records requires informed participant consent. When linkage includes child data, this includes parental and child consent. Little is known of the potential impacts of introducing consent to data linkage on response rates and biases in school-based surveys. This paper assessed: i) the impact on overall parental consent rates and sample representativeness when consent for linkage was introduced and ii) the quality of identifiable data provided to facilitate linkage. Methods: Including an option for data linkage was piloted in a sub-sample of schools participating in the Student Health and Wellbeing survey, a national survey of adolescents in Wales, UK. Schools agreeing to participate were randomized 2:1 to receive versus not receive the data linkage question. Survey responses from consenting students were anonymised and linked to routine datasets (e.g. general practice, inpatient, and outpatient records). Parental withdrawal rates were calculated for linkage and non-linkage samples. Multilevel logistic regression models were used to compare characteristics between: i) consenters and non-consenters; ii) successfully and unsuccessfully linked students; and iii) the linked cohort and peers within the general population, with additional comparisons of mental health diagnoses and health service contacts. Results: The sub-sample comprised 64 eligible schools (out of 193), with data linkage piloted in 39. Parental consent was comparable across linkage and non-linkage schools. 48.7% (n = 9232) of students consented to data linkage. Modelling showed these students were more likely to be younger, more affluent, have higher positive mental wellbeing, and report fewer risk-related behaviours compared to non-consenters. Overall, 69.8% of consenting students were successfully linked, with higher rates of success among younger students. The linked cohort had lower rates of mental health diagnoses (5.8% vs. 8.8%) and specialist contacts (5.2% vs. 7.7%) than general population peers.
ResultsReal on-trade (β=-0.661, p<0.01) and off-trade (β=-0.277, p<0.05) alcohol prices were negatively related with rates of violence-related ED attendance among the adult population of England and Wales, after accounting for the effects of regional poverty, income inequality, youth spending power and seasonal effects. It is estimated that over 6,000 fewer violence-related ED attendances per year in England and Wales would result from a 1% increase in both on-trade and off-trade alcohol prices above inflation. Of the variables studied, changes in regional poverty and income inequality had the greatest effect on violence-related ED attendances in England and Wales.
ConclusionSmall increases in the price of alcohol, above inflation, in both markets, would substantially reduce the number of patients attending EDs for treatment of violence-related injuries in England and Wales.Reforming the current alcohol taxation system may be more effective at reducing violence-related injury than minimum unit pricing.
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KEY MESSAGEWhat is already known on this subject? A causal link between alcohol and violence is often assumed but has proven difficult to establish. A link between the price of beer and risk of violence-related injury has been identified in England and Wales; lower beer prices were associated with higher rates of violence-related Emergency Department attendance.
What this study adds Risk of violence-related Emergency Department attendance in England and Wales is greater when on-trade and off-trade alcohol prices are lower. On-trade alcohol prices have a greater impact on violence than off-trade prices.
Purpose
Studying mental wellbeing requires the use of reliable, valid, and practical assessment tools, such as the Short version of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Research on the mental wellbeing of children in care is sparse. The current study aims to: (1) examine the unidimensionality of SWEMWBS; (2) assess measurement invariance of SWEMWBS across children and young people in care compared to their peers not in care; and (3) investigate the latent factor mean differences between care status groups.
Methods
We used data from the 2017 School Health Research Network Student Health and Wellbeing (SHW) survey, completed by 103,971 students in years 7 to 11 from 193 secondary schools in Wales. The final data include a total of 2,795 participants (46% boys), which includes all children in care and a sub-sample of children not in care who completed the SWEMWBS scale fully and answered questions about their living situation.
Results
Confirmatory factor analysis supported the unidimensionality of SWEMWBS. The SWEMWBS is invariant across groups of young people in foster, residential and kinship care compared to children and young people not in care at configural, metric and scalar levels. Findings from latent mean comparisons showed that young people in care reported lower mental wellbeing than their peers, with those in residential care reporting the lowest scores.
Conclusions
Findings suggest that SWEMWBS is a valid scale for measuring differences in mental wellbeing for young people in care similar to the population.
Background: The coronavirus disease outbreak in December 2019 rapidly spread around the world with profound effects on healthcare systems. In March 2020, all elective surgery and elective outpatient clinics were cancelled in our institution, a regional hospital in Northern New South Wales, Australia. With regard to orthopaedic fracture clinics, a telehealth system was implemented on an emergency basis for patient and staff safety to prevent disease transmission. The aim of our study was to investigate whether rapid implementation of telehealth for orthopaedic fracture clinics resulted in an increase in complications. Methods: A retrospective cohort study of all patients with orthopaedic fracture clinic appointments at a regional New South Wales hospital between 17 March and 8 May 2020 was undertaken. There were 191 patients, including 390 appointments of which 23.1% were conducted via telehealth, namely by phone call. Complications requiring phone calls to the orthopaedic team, presentations to the emergency department, admission to hospital or return to theatre, were recorded. Results: There was no increase in complications following emergent implementation of telehealth for orthopaedic fracture clinic follow-up in our institution. Patients in the telehealth group were significantly older than those in the clinic group. Conclusion: The study demonstrates that application of telehealth fracture clinics in a regional Australian setting can be achieved without increasing complication rates and can be used to formulate a rapid telehealth implementation plan if a similar scenario occurs in the future.
There are ongoing policy concerns surrounding the difficulty in obtaining timely appointments to primary healthcare services and the potential impact on, for example, attendance at accident and emergency services and potential health outcomes. Using the case study of potential access to primary healthcare services in Wales, Geographic Information System (GIS)‐based tools that permit a consideration of population‐to‐provider ratios over space are used to examine variations in geographical accessibility to general practitioner (GP) surgeries offering appointment times outside of ‘core’ operating hours. Correlation analysis is used to explore the association of accessibility scores with potential demand for such services using UK Population Census data. Unlike the situation in England, there is a tendency for accessibility to those surgeries offering ‘extended’ hours of appointment times to be better for more deprived census areas in Wales. However, accessibility to surgeries offering appointments in the evening was associated with lower levels of working age population classed as ‘economically active’; that is, those who could be targeted beneficiaries of policies geared towards ‘extended’ appointment hours provision. Such models have the potential to identify spatial mismatches of different facets of primary healthcare, such as ‘extended’ hours provision available at GP surgeries, and are worthy of further investigation, especially in relation to policies targeted at particular demographic groups.
From an ED perspective, violence in England and Wales decreased substantially between 2010 and 2014, especially among children and adolescents. Violence prevention efforts should focus on regions with the highest injury rates and during the period May-July.
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