COLLATION AND COMPARISON OF DATA ON RESPIRATORY DISEASE

INTRODUCTION AND CONTENTS

This report summarises the results of work commissioned by the Department of Health, and carried out during 1997-1999 by the Department of Public Health Sciences, St George’s Hospital Medical School, in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics.

The authors of the report were Prof David Strachan, Dr Anna Hansell, Mr Tom Nichols and Prof H Ross Anderson (all of SGHMS); Dr Jen Hollowell and Ms Rosie McNiece (both of ONS).

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The aims of the project were:

  1. To investigate whether consistent patterns emerge from nationally available sources of data on respiratory disease when analysed by time, place and person, and
  2. To test the validity and feasibility of using routinely available data to explore environmental influences on respiratory disease.

Ten respiratory conditions (listed below) were studied to investigate:

  1. The information routinely available (mortality, hospital admissions, primary care, surveys).
  2. The number of cases at regional and district level, and their implications for statistical power.
  3. The likely magnitude of environmental, lifestyle and medical care influences on specific geographical comparisons and trends over time.
  4. The future needs for health information relating to respiratory disease at a local level.

The report appears on this website in the form of portable document files (PDF). To read or print these you will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader version 3.0 or above. This can be obtained free of charge by clicking here. To read the executive summary without using Acrobat, click here.

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Sections on general issues

 

Appendices on specific diseases

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This website was created on 17 February 2000 and last modified on 24 July 2001. Enquiries should be addressed to:

Prof David Strachan, Department of Public Health Sciences, St George’s Hospital Medical School, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 0RE. E-mail: d.strachan@sghms.ac.uk.

Further information about respiratory disease and related topics may be obtained from factsheets published by the Lung and Asthma Information Agency, available from the LAIA website.