Association between socio-economic status and neonatal hospitalisation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Is neighbourhood deprivation associated with neonatal hospitalisations and outcomes?
IRAS ID
248772
Contact name
Colin Peters
Contact email
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 16 days
Research summary
Scotland has large health inequalities and high levels of deprivation, with those with a lower socio-economic status having poorer health and social outcomes than those with a higher socio-economic status. The influence of socio-economic status also affects pregnancy and birth outcomes for expectant mothers. The aim of this study is to investigate the social influences on neonatal admissions. Secondary data will be obtained from the neonatal electronic database BadgerNet for all babies admitted to a neonatal unit within Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board between April 2014- April 2017. BadgerNet is an administrative medical data base, completed manually by medical staff for every baby admitted to a neonatal unit. This database contains information regarding; birth weight, type of delivery, condition at birth, and suspected primary reason for neonatal admission. Administrative data, such as those collected in BadgerNet, offer an untapped potential to better understand neonatal outcomes for mothers and babies. However, because this data has not been collected for research purposes, the completeness and quality of the data may present challenges. The first step in this work will be to assess these challenges and highlight any lessons for future research.
Two further primary objectives will be explored; if neonatal admissions are associated with socio-economic status and if the main neonatal admissions criterion are associated with maternal socio-economic position. As the quality of the data is unclear, secondary outcomes exploring the social distribution of preterm spontaneous deliveries, length of stay in the neonatal unit and maternal factors will only be explored if the data is deemed to be viable for this purpose.
Socio-economic position will be represented by SIMD, assigned using maternal postcode of residence. Postcodes will be translated into a quintile of deprivation, allowing for 5 distinct groups, 1 representing the most deprived and 5 representing the least deprived.
REC name
West of Scotland REC 3
REC reference
19/WS/0035
Date of REC Opinion
27 Mar 2019
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion