Open to: Academic | Alumni | Public | Student
Admission: Free
Ticketing: Open

Speaker information

Dr Jennifer Mindell, Senior Clinical Lecturer, UCL Division of Population Health, Dr Jennifer Mindell is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in the Health and Social Surveys Research Group, Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at UCL. She trained in general practice before entering public health medicine and was previously deputy director of the London Health Observatory. She heads the UCL team of the Joint Health Surveys Unit of NatCen and UCL, working on the Health Survey for England series and other surveys. Her PhD explored ways of quantifying impacts on health of other policies. She is vice- chair of the UK Transport and Health Study Group, a trustee of ASH, Action on Smoking and Health, and honorary secretary of the Society for Social Medicine. Her research interests focus on survey methodology and on transport and health.

England is unusual in having had an annual health examination survey, the Health Survey for England, for the past 20 years. Each year since 1991, a random sample of households in England are selected to take part in the survey, which includes face-to-face interviews, self-completion questionnaires, physical measurements, and collection of biological samples for analysis. Participants are also asked for permission to link their data to administrative records for long term follow-up of health outcomes.

This talk will cover the aims of the survey, methods used, trends, and some recent findings. It will show how initially the focus was on circulatory diseases in adults but the survey has expanded to include children and to cover a wider range of topics and a number of population sub- groups as well as providing core data on the general population. The talk will consider a number of challenges for the survey now and in the future.

Contact

Floriana Bortolotti
+44 (0)20 7679 1681 | f.bortolotti@ucl.ac.uk