A feasibility study to explore the governance processes required for linkage between dental epidemiological, and birth cohort, data in the U.K.

A feasibility study to explore the governance processes required for linkage between dental epidemiological, and birth cohort, data in the U.K. Community Dent Health. 2018 Oct 16;: Authors: Day PF, Petherick E, Godson J, Owen J, Douglas G Abstract Birth cohort initiatives, such as 'Born in Bradford', provide a unique opportunity to study the influence of socio-economic and environmental factors acting in pregnancy, birth and infancy on the development of dental caries in later life. This paper describes a feasibility study which established the processes required, and outcomes of, successful linkage of oral health data collected by the 2013 three-year-old national dental epidemiology survey with the Born in Bradford birth cohort database. The necessary processes included achieving research permissions and ethical approval; creation of a data sharing agreement; ensuring data security and encrypted data transfer. With regard to the outcomes, a robust a priori statistical plan was developed. 152 three-year-old children were examined for the 2013 dental epidemiology survey in Bradford, and of those, 69 parents consented to data linkage believing that their child was part of the Born in Bradford cohort. However, only 36 of these 69 children were participating in the cohort. Of these, six children had obvious dentinal caries experience (dmft ⟩0). There was insufficient power with such small numbers, to examine the association between bir...
Source: Community Dental Health - Category: Dentistry Tags: Community Dent Health Source Type: research