RGS conference London 2006 Scoping a homelessness and drug/alcohol cohort dataset from routine information Mr Iain Atherton Dr Chris Dibben Prof Joe Doherty Dr Alex Baldacchino Chief Scientist Office

RGS conference London 2006 Researching homelessness/substance misuse –Group with high health needs physical/mental health social services Costs –Need for evidence based interventions BUT DIFFICULT & EXPENSIVE: –Chaotic lives –Illegal activities

RGS conference London 2006 Previous work Surveys (e.g. OPCS, 1994; various school surveys; DORIS) Hospital admissions (i.e. Ditton and Speirits, 1982; Burns et al. 2006) Deaths (i.e. Seymour et al., 2001) Capture/recapture (i.e. Kraus, 2003)

RGS conference London 2006 Hospital and death data Contains information on: –Basic demographics –Social (ecological data) –Morbidity (ICD codes, length of hospitalisation) –Geography Place of residence Place of treatment

RGS conference London 2006 Identifying homelessness ICD codes –Specific z codes –Other morbidity Postcodes

RGS conference London 2006 Identifying substance misuse ICD-10 codes –F and z codes –Other morbidities

RGS conference London 2006 Aberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow Inverness

RGS conference London 2006

Limitations Routine or administrative datasets Limited specific information on homelessness Good – health/ substance misuse; poor behaviour/ substance misuse Little social data

RGS conference London 2006 Validating Credible statistics –Age and gender comparisons –Survival time Credible spatial and temporal trends Comparison to other studies –OPCS homelessness study 1994 –ONS psychiatric morbidity study 2001 Discussion with service providers

RGS conference London 2006 From here… Ongoing analysis/validation of the dataset Additional data ‘Natural experiments’

RGS conference London 2006 Acknowledgements Chief Scientist’s Office for Scotland The HOMAR team –Dr David Manley –Dr Maria Stuttaford –Ms Roslyn Blair