Linking police data with health and education for public benefit
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN13197792 |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN13197792 |
- Submission date
- 27/04/2021
- Registration date
- 05/07/2021
- Last edited
- 08/07/2021
- Recruitment status
- No longer recruiting
- Overall study status
- Completed
- Condition category
- Other
Plain English summary of protocol
Background and study aims
Public health planning, crime prevention and health care are all greatly helped by data sharing between different organisations. The 1998 Crime and Disorder Act requires police, local government and NHS to collaborate on joint strategies. There are situations where data is shared on individuals, for example in high-risk domestic abuse cases, in the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) which brings multi-agencies together at a local level. However, combining entire datasets of all data held by the police with health, education, social services data could greatly help give the whole picture and understanding of how early action could prevent serious illness/ serious crime. This study focuses on bringing together police data with NHS data to improve the ability to tackle domestic abuse in pregnancy.
Who can participate?
Member of the police service living in Wales and dealing with public protection
What does the study involve?
The researchers will examine in work package 1 if data from reports can be extracted by using automated text extraction methods. In work package 2 they will catalogue all the software systems used and how they might be combined together. In work package 3 they will undertake an example case study bringing together Public Protection Notification data (when a pregnant woman is present), with A&E, GP, hospital, maternal indicators dataset, national community child health data, substance abuse dataset. Finally, in work package 4, the researchers will examine how best to identify the same person in different datasets (e.g. in GP data and in police data). They will also hold two half-day multiagency workshops to discuss findings and how data sharing on a national level could be taken forward. They will work with members of the public in patient and public involvement teams. Finally, this work will complement work in England which brings together education and Ministry of Justice data and enable cross country comparisons. This work is the next step on the road to creating national multi-agency partnerships to improve the life chances for children growing up in disadvantage (such as situations of poor mental health/substance abuse/domestic violence/areas of high violence & crime).
Where is the study is run from?
Swansea University (UK)
When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run?
April 2021 to December 2021
Who is funding the study?
National Institute for Health Research (UK)
Who is the main contact?
Prof. Sinead Brophy
s.brophy@swansea.ac.uk
Contact information
Scientific
Data Science Building
Swansea University
Swansea
SA2 8PP
United Kingdom
 ORCID ID |
0000-0001-7417-2858 |
|---|---|
| Phone | +44 (0)7864836943 |
| s.brophy@swansea.ac.uk |
Study information
| Study design | Qualitative interviews, pilot study of data linkage and text mining |
|---|---|
| Primary study design | Observational |
| Secondary study design | Qualitative study |
| Study setting(s) | Other |
| Study type | Other |
| Scientific title | Unlocking data to inform public health policy and practice: a scoping pilot study |
| Study objectives | The problems of bringing together entire datasets at a national level (as opposed to sharing reports on the individual at a local level) include; the type of data held by the police is often descriptive text and this is not easy to share or analyse, there are multiple different software systems used by different forces which are not compatible and so difficult to combine and share, there are few examples where entire databases have been shared and so it is difficult to demonstrate the advantages, the methods of identifying people are not the same in different organisations (e.g. NHS number is not recorded in the police dataset, pupil ID number is not recorded in police data). This project aims to overcome these barriers one by one and help unlock data to inform public health policy and practice. |
| Ethics approval(s) | Approved 07/05/2021, Swansea University Medical School Research Ethics Committee (Swansea University Medical School, Institute of Life Science 2, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, SA2 8PP; +44(0)1792 60 2697; sumsresc@swansea.ac.uk), ref: 2021-0042 |
| Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied | Domestic violence/public protection |
| Intervention | 1. Qualitative interviews - interviewing members of the police service regarding their IT systems 2. Pilot study of data linkage - pilot study to link Public Protection Notification data with health (GP, A&E and hospital) data 3. Text mining - examining if relevant data can be extracted from text fields to be coded for information sharing and linkage The researchers will examine in work package 1 if data from reports can be extracted by using automated text extraction methods. In work package 2 they will catalogue all the software systems used and how they might be combined together. In work package 3 they will undertake an example case study bringing together Public Protection Notification data (when a pregnant woman is present), with A&E, GP, hospital, maternal indicators dataset, national community child health data, substance abuse dataset. Finally, in work package 4, the researchers will examine how best to identify the same person in different datasets (e.g. in GP data and in police data). They will also hold two half-day multiagency workshops to discuss findings and how data sharing on a national level could be taken forward. They will work with members of the public in patient and public involvement teams. Finally, this work will complement work in England which brings together education and Ministry of Justice data and enable cross country comparisons. This work is the next step on the road to creating national multi-agency partnerships to improve the life chances for children growing up in disadvantage (such as situations of poor mental health/substance abuse/domestic violence/areas of high violence & crime). |
| Intervention type | Other |
| Primary outcome measure | Evaluation of the added benefit of inclusion of Police data when profiling vulnerable families and evaluation of linkage quality when linking records from different organisations measured using qualitative interviews with the police service at 2 to 4 months |
| Secondary outcome measures | There are no secondary outcome measures |
| Overall study start date | 01/04/2021 |
| Completion date | 31/12/2021 |
Eligibility
| Participant type(s) | Other |
|---|---|
| Age group | Adult |
| Sex | Both |
| Target number of participants | 20 |
| Key inclusion criteria | Member of the police service living in Wales and dealing with public protection |
| Key exclusion criteria | Not working in the Police service |
| Date of first enrolment | 01/06/2021 |
| Date of final enrolment | 30/11/2021 |
Locations
Countries of recruitment
- United Kingdom
- Wales
Study participating centre
Swansea
SA2 8PP
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
Government
University of Southampton
Alpha House, Enterprise Rd
Southampton
SO16 7NS
United Kingdom
| Phone | +44 (0)113 343 2314 |
|---|---|
| enquiries@nihr.ac.uk | |
| Website | https://www.nihr.ac.uk/ |
"ROR" |
https://ror.org/0187kwz08 |
Funders
Funder type
Government
No information available
Results and Publications
| Intention to publish date | 01/03/2022 |
|---|---|
| Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share | No |
| IPD sharing plan summary | Not expected to be made available |
| Publication and dissemination plan | Planned publication in relevant journal |
| IPD sharing plan | The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not expected to be made available. The participant level data is interviews with the police force about data they collect and this is sensitive data and due to small numbers and the likely local context may enable individuals to be identified and so is not suitable for sharing in its raw form. |
Study outputs
| Output type | Details | Date created | Date added | Peer reviewed? | Patient-facing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Protocol file | version v1.0 | 01/04/2021 | 08/07/2021 | No | No |
Additional files
- ISRCTN13197792_PROTOCOL_v1.0_1Apr2021.pdf
- Uploaded 08/07/2021
Editorial Notes
08/07/2021: Uploaded protocol Version 1.0, 1 April 2021 (not peer reviewed).
11/06/2021: Trial’s existence confirmed by NIHR Evaluation, Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC).
