Covid-19 Pandemic Response

In 2020, we rapidly repurposed existing programmes of work in order to address the immediate needs of the COVID-19 pandemic response. This page provides an overview of work done in this area.

Background

In 2019, to support the focus on population health management in the NHS Long Term Plan, the Chief Data Analytics Office (CDAO) in NHS England, Public Health England (PHE), Outcomes Based Healthcare and Arden & GEM CSU successfully piloted a national data-driven approach to population segmentation within NHS England’s data environment. The resulting National Bridges to Health Segmentation Dataset has been produced and refreshed regularly since 2019 to date.

The National Bridges to Health Segmentation Dataset:

  • is a life-course model that groups people into 8 segments and 59 subsegment/condition registers. It covers the entire population of England registered to a GP practice, for each month over the last 7 years (April 2016 – March 2023).
  • is derived from over 15 years of Secondary Uses Service (SUS) data (which includes A&E data, hospital admissions data and outpatient data), several years of Maternity, Mental Health, Community Services, SLAM, IAPT, Assuring Transformation data, National Diabetes Audit and Hospital Frailty Risk Score data.

Further information about the National Segmentation Dataset can be found in the Population and Person Insight (PaPI) Workspace on the FutureNHS site, and on OBH’s National Work page.

COVID-19 Report – Estimated ‘vulnerable populations ‘at risk’
of severe illness from COVID-19 in England

Using the National Segmentation Dataset, OBH have quantified those who are at risk of severe illness from COVID-19 at local and national levels. During the pandemic, in accordance with the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) guidelines, estimated cohort sizes for those clinically extremely vulnerable (who were on the Shielded Patient List) and those considered ‘clinically vulnerable’ were produced, and informed the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The data is refreshed following each release of the National Segmentation Dataset with the latest data available.

This latest report provides estimates of the ‘clinically vulnerable’ populations ‘at risk’ of severe illness from COVID-19 at ICB and national level as of March 2023.

The output of this work has been incorporated into the NHS PaPI Dashboard, and visualised area by area.

Key Findings include:

  • 17.5 million (c.28.0% of England’s population) are ‘at risk’ of severe COVID-19 illness (includes people aged 65 and over, or any age but with one or more at risk conditions)
  • 69.2% (c.12.1 million) of the ‘at risk’ cohort nationally have a known COVID-19 risk factor condition, rather than just being ‘at risk’ due to age alone
  • 48.8% (c5.4 million) of people aged 65 and over have no currently known clinical risk factors for COVID-19 complications
  • Wide variation at ICB level (between 19-39%) in size of the ‘core older and clinically vulnerable’ cohort.

Download the report

Associated of type 1 and type 2 diabetes with COVID-19-related mortality in England: a whole population study

The National Segmentation Dataset was used for a significant analysis published in Lancet exploring the risk of diabetes on mortality from COVID-19.

Read the publication