The document describes the Wales Electronic Cohort for Children (WECC) study. WECC is an anonymized total population e-cohort of children born or residing in Wales from 1990 onwards. It contains birth information linked to primary care, secondary care, education and other datasets. The study aims to extend the cohort to investigate social and environmental determinants of child health outcomes. It employs SQL procedures to clean and cross-validate data between the Welsh Demographic Service, National Community and Child Health Database, Office for National Statistics, and other sources. The enhanced WECC cohort currently contains over 1 million children born between 1990-2013 and links to data from 1,901 Millennium Cohort Study participants to create a nested hybrid cohort.

1. Automated and cross-validated core of DWECC
Wales Electronic Cohort for Children
(WECC) study
from e-cohort study to automated hybrid e-cohort
Joanne Demmler1, Sinead Brophy1, Melanie A. Hyatt1, Amrita Bandyopadhyay1, Shantini Paranjothy2,
Sarah Rodgers1, Hayley Hutchings1, Belinda Gabbe3, Ronan A. Lyons1
1 The Centre for Improvement in Population Health through E-records Research (CIPHER), Swansea University, UK
2 Institute of Primary Care & Public Health, Cardiff University, UK
3 Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, AU
Email: j.demmler@swansea.ac.uk, Twitter@JCDemmler
www.decipher.uk.net
OBJECTIVES
WECC is an anonymised total population e-cohort of
children in Wales from 1990 onwards. In the current
rebid of the project we are extending the cohort to
build a continuously updated platform for investigating
the widest possible range of social and environmental
determinants of child health and social outcomes.
METHODS
WECC participants were identified from the Welsh
Demographic Service (WDS), National Community and
Child Health Database (NCCHD) and Office for National
Statistics (ONS). We are employing SQL procedures to
implement data cleaning algorithms and cross-
validation between different datasets, including the
Congenital Anomaly Register & Information Service
(CARIS).
WDS NCCHD
Study
population
Data
augmentation
Cross-validation
& cleaning
Data
augmentation
Week of
birth
Gender
Birth
Weight
Gestational
Age
Date of
Death
Maternal
Age
Multiple
Births
Small for
gestational age
ONS
births
ONS
deaths
CARIS
C-sections Migration Immunisations
DWECC currently contains ~1 million children born or residing in
Wales between 1990-2013. It contains not only birth information, but
is also linkable to Primary and Secondary Care records as well as
Educational outcomes at the different key stages.
DWECC also embeds data from 1,901 Millennium Cohort Study
participants, creating a nested hybrid cohort.
DWECC
e-cohort
Millenium
cohort
Link enables data validationPrimary
Care
Secondary
Care
Education
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. Does moving to a less deprived community
influence child health and educational outcomes?
2. To what extent do serious childhood or family
health conditions affect educational outcomes?
3. Is poor educational attainment a risk factor for
adverse health in adolescence?
4. Can a novel ‘H shaped’ hybrid cohort evaluate the
strengths and weaknesses of e-cohorts based on
routinely collected data that may not have the full
complement of variables that are used in more
detailed epidemiological studies?
Unemployment
Ill-health
Low
salary
Health of
children
Educational
attainment
Environment
Family size
Household
illness
CHILD ADULT