Using Big Data to understand the Health Impacts of Climate Change

The Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS) in conjunction with the Oxford Martin School has launched an exciting new multi-disciplinary programme on the Future of Cooling based at the Oxford Martin School.  The  primary  goal  of  the  programme  is  to  examine  cooling  energy  demand  growth  as  an integrated system of key social and technical components, and identify and influence the levers by which its current trajectory can be shaped to deliver sustainable development.

The NDPCHS Big Data group is expanding its team of researchers, data scientists, programmers and statisticians working on the Future of Cooling programme to understand the health impacts of climate change in the UK, the likely costs for the NHS, and the use of air conditioning or other cooling practices to reduce the health burden of extreme heat, managing and analysing data arising from different datasets.

The DPhil student will be primarily involved in managing and analysing data arising from different datasets within the NDPCHS, particularly the Clinical Practice Research Datalink – CPRD (an observational database of electronic GP health records for over 59 million patients, including 16 million currently registered patients), and the Oxford Royal College of General Practitioners Health Informatics Data Hub (ORCHID), which is an active research and surveillance unit that collects and monitors data from over 1700 practices (over 17 million people) across England and Wales and provides almost real-time data and feedback to contributing practices.  As an example of the type of analyses to be carried out, the post holder will use information from these databases to link it with weather data and make forecasts of the health burden of climate change in the UK using information from general circulation models. The research conducted will inform targeted health, energy and climate policy interventions.

Supervisors: Professor Rafael Perera; Professor Clare Bankhead; Dr Anant Jani