Social and Environmental Determinants of Health

The Social and Environmental Determinants of Health programme will enable data from many different sources to be linked together to support research into understanding how different social and environmental factors affect our health and wellbeing, initially looking at childhood and ageing. With public involvement, it will develop the secure and trustworthy approaches needed to build up detailed pictures, whilst still preserving privacy, of how such factors affect individuals, their homes and households so that new approaches, services and policies can be developed to improve people's lives.

This work is funded by the UKRI Medical Research Council, UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UKRI Economic and Social Research Council, Department of Health and Social Care, National Institute for Health Research (England), Chief Scientist Office (Scottish Government), Health and Care Research Wales, Public Health Agency HSC (Northern Ireland), British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK

The Social and Environmental (S&E) Determinants of Health Driver Programme will achieve a step change in capability across UK Trusted Research Environments (TREs) for data linkage using the de-facto UK address identification number, known as the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN). It will build on methods, privacy protection and public involvement developed in HDR UK’s first five years to standardise the use of a pseudonymised UPRN spine for research that connects individuals to homes and households over time. It will standardise and share modelled environmental variables at address level to enhance administrative and recruited cohorts across TREs. The programme will engage the public, TREs and data custodians in standardising the assignment and use of UPRN-linked data for research, ensuring privacy protection and advancing science and evidence for policy and services.
UPRN will be embedded into data resources across the UK, covering >65 million people in national administrative datasets and millions in recruited cohorts. New linkages will cover the life course, but the Driver Programme’s scientific questions will focus on childhood and ageing - periods of rapid physiological development or decline and increased susceptibility to environmental hazards and to social risk factors through dependency on carers. The programme's scientific exemplars and pilot work will assess the quality and utility of UPRN-linked social, environmental and longitudinal administrative or recruited cohort data, and triangulate evidence across data sources, TREs and UK countries. By 2028, this programme will deliver a standardised approach to UPRN linkages for research across TREs, a UK-wide capability to link multi-domain data resources to people’s homes and households, and FAIR data assets accessible safely and securely for research throughout the network of TREs.