About COALESCE

COALESCE stands for: Capacity and capability Of UK-wide Analysts to LEverage health data at Scale using COVID-19 as an Exemplar. 

Our consortium's primary aim is to provide both the UK and the devolved governments (Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales) with the information necessary to actionably improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake and coverage. 

Our wider-reaching aim, however, is to further develop analytical processes and procedures that will allow for future UK-wide COVID-19 studies.  

We also hope that, in time (and subject to permissions) these methods will also be able to facilitate other urgent, non-COVID-19 UK-wide research. 

Leadership

COALESCE is co-led by Scotland’s EAVE II project and the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre led by Health Data Research UK.  

Find out more about: EAVE II

Find out more about: BHF Data Science Centre

Academic partners

Our consortium is made up of collaborators who based at institutions located across all four UK nations, including:

involves collaborators based at institutions across all four UK nations, including:

• Imperial College London
• Public Health Agency (Northern Ireland)
• Public Health Scotland
• Swansea University
• The University of Aberdeen
• The University of Bristol
• The University of Cambridge
• The University of Edinburgh
• The University of Leicester
• The University of Strathclyde
• University College London
• Queen's University Belfast

Patient and Public Involvement

Our membership also includes 10 Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) representatives, who are actively involved in discussing, developing and modifying our programme of research. Spread across the UK, four members of our PAG (each from a different nation) served on the COALESCE steering group committee, which meets once a month. The wider group meet quarterly and are kept up to date via email in between meetings.  

 The PAG provides support throughout the project focusing particularly on the following: 

• Ensuring the project stays patient focused 

• Input into monthly steering group meetings 

• Prioritising objectives and methods from a public perspective 

• Contribute to synthesising results and conclusions of PPI activities 

• Support the dissemination of results  

• Co-production of patient facing materials 

Our team aims to provide both UK and devolved governments with data-driven, usable insights that can be used to improve COVID-19 vaccine uptake and coverage. 

To do this, we are working towards: 

• Identifying and describing which groups of people in the UK, and each of the four nations, are sub-optimally vaccinated;

• Understanding and characterising what serious outcomes of infection, such as COVID-19 related hospital admissions, critical care unit admissions and deaths, among people who are sub-optimally vaccinated;

• Considering the possible policy and healthcare implications of our results for each nation and the UK as a whole. 

For this project, we are classifying a person as being sub-optimally vaccinated if they are eligible to receive a dose of a vaccine (i.e., not medically exempt), but have not been vaccinated. 

To that end, we are looking at individuals who qualify for but have not received either their: 

• First dose; 

• Second dose; 

• Third dose; 

• First booster; or 

• Second booster vaccinations. 

COALESCE have received the necessary access and permissions to analyse data from across each of the four nations: 

• For England, we will use data acquired from the CVD-COVID-UK/ COVID-IMPACT cohort (57 million population) 

• For Scotland, we will use data accessed through the EAVE II study (5.4 million population) 

• For Wales we will use data from the SAIL Databank (3.2 million population) 

• For Northern Ireland, we will use data acquired through the Honest Broker Service (1.9 million population) 

First, our team will work to standardise each of these datasets as much as possible, so that it is easier for our researchers to analyse the data in and across them. 

To do this, we will use a Common Data Model called OMOP.

Afterwards, we will conduct analyses within each of the four nations of those who are sub-optimally vaccinated. We will also identify instances of COVID-19 related hospital admissions, critical care admissions and deaths for these groups. 

Next, we will make comparisons between the four nations before moving on to conduct a UK-wide meta-analysis. 

Vaccination is central to society’s recovery from the pandemic and resilience against future waves of infection. Our work will support government messaging and national public health agencies to maximise vaccine-based protection to as many people in the UK as possible. 

Our research will, by extension, help save lives, reduce the incidence of COVID-19 related hospital admissions and deaths, particularly for the most vulnerable members of society. This is especially relevant due to future epidemic waves that are anticipated due to waning immunity against COVID-19, increases in social contact and the emergence of new viral variants. 

Furthermore, COALESCE will help pave the way for future UK-level analyses that include data from all four nations, by further developing the necessary data intelligence, frameworks and partnerships for the rapid and efficient delivery of UK-wide population studies. 

We hope in the future these could extend to beyond COVID-19 research and facilitate studies addressing other pressing health challenges such as cancer, heart disease and respiratory disorders.