neoWONDER: Whole Population Data Linkage for preterm and sick babies

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  neoWONDER: Neonatal Whole Population Data linkage approach to improving long-term health and wellbeing of preterm and sick babies

• IRAS ID

  293603

• Contact name

  Cheryl Battersby

• Contact email

  c.battersby@imperial.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Head of Research Governance and Integrity, Imperial College

• Duration of Study in the UK

  4 years, 4 months, 6 days

• Research summary

  Aim
  To improve the lifelong health and wellbeing of babies born preterm or sick by linking existing data to evaluate the long-term impact of neonatal interventions.

  Background
  In the UK each year, around 8,000 babies (2-3% of all births) are born before 32 weeks (more than 2 months early). They require specialised neonatal care and are at risk of life-long disability and health problems. Another group of babies with potential life-long complications are those who require surgery in the first few weeks of life.
  Improving the life-long health and wellbeing of preterm and sick babies is a national priority. To do this, we need to monitor their progress over a long time and find out what neonatal care and interventions (like feeding or breathing support) or factors after hospital discharge (like social or environmental) make a difference.

  However, the major obstacle is obtaining this information, which is very complex and expensive. As a result, we have no information about the longer term progress of very preterm or sick babies born during the last decade.

  We will obtain long-term information by linking together data that exist separately. This is a simpler and more cost-efficient approach and can be continued in the future to track outcomes into adulthood.
  Design and methods

  We will link an established database containing data from babies in NHS neonatal units, the National Neonatal Research Database (NNRD), to other routine health and educational data. We will do this for around 100,000 babies born in England and Wales over a 14-year period (2007-2020).

  We will answer the following questions:
  What are the long-term health and educational outcomes?
  Does air pollution or other environmental and socio-economic factors influence these outcomes?
  What is the impact of certain neonatal interventions, for example donor breast milk on later health and educational outcomes?
  

• REC name

  East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  21/EM/0130

• Date of REC Opinion

  2 Jun 2021

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion