Epidemiology Data from the Scottish Health and Ethnicity Linkage Study (SHELS)

Abstract

We linked the 2001 Scottish Census, which contains ethnicity, socio-economic and demographic data to health and death records, creating an anonymised retrospective cohort study of 4.65 million people to assess the association between ethnicity and health outcomes in Scotland. The databases contain data mostly from hospital discharge and mortality records, but also from other registers. The databases are stored in a safe haven at the National Records of Scotland (NRS). NRS is currently exploring the feasibility of making Scottish Health and Ethnicity Linkage Study (SHELS) data open access while ensuring that the same level of confidentiality is maintained. If SHELS becomes open access it could be reused, with the appropriate approvals, to assess the influence of other socio-economic or demographic measures on the Scottish population’s health.