Intervene & Evaluate

We aim to utilise the UK’s outstanding health and health-related data asset, and work with members of the public, colleagues and partners across the UK, to provide key policy and clinical insights that will improve respiratory outcomes for the UK’s population.

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Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Intervene & Evaluate

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Co-Lead investigators, leading our programme alongside Professor Jenni Quint. 

Based at the Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh, Aziz is a leading clinical respiratory epidemiologist with a special interest in the interface between health data science and policy.  

His current work focuses on laying the foundations necessary to create learning health systems capable of using linked, multi-dimensional data to support and evaluate policymaking, health system improvements and the personalisation of care. 

Outside of the programme, Aziz is the Director of the Usher Institute, and Dean of Data for The University of Edinburgh, as well as the Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR) and a Research Director of Health Data Research UK. 

He has substantial experience working across a range of research areas including asthma, allergy and in leveraging the potential of health information technology and data science to transform the delivery of care and improve population health. 

Aziz enjoys collaborations with academic colleagues across the globe and works closely with policymakers both in the UK and internationally. He has, together with colleagues, held research grants of more than £100m and publishes regularly in the world's foremost journals. 

Read Aziz’s professional profile 

Useful links 

Find out more about AUK CAR 

Learn more about Aziz’s projects and outputs 

View Aziz’s ResearchGate profile 

Inflammation and Immunity is a fantastic opportunity to improve the quality of data recording and the use of data to better respiratory outcomes for people in the UK. We will then expand our learning to other diseases.

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Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Intervene & Evaluate

Professor Jenni Quint is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Co-lead investigators, leading our programme alongside Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh.  

A Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology at Imperial College London, Jenni’s goal is to enable better and more timely data linkage to answer important questions around respiratory disease. 

She has unparalleled, specialist knowledge on using various sources of de-identified, routinely collected electronic healthcare records (EHRs) data in England to support research into the UK’s most common respiratory diseases. This includes COPD, asthma, interstitial lung disease, bronchiectasis and COVID-19. 

Jenni’s ambition and vision are vital to our success. She recognises that whilst data curation and accessibility is fundamental to achieving our aims, maximising the quality, inclusivity and usage of these data is key to driving further innovation and development. 

Jenni also leads the Respiratory EHR group which has developed a robust understanding of the strengths and limitations of using routinely collected health data for research purposes, particularly diagnostic coding practices in clinical settings and how these might then affect research outcomes. 

She is also the primary supervisor to two of our PhD students, Zak Gassasse and Harley Kwok, as well as affiliated PhD student Rong Ding. 

Read Jenni's professional profile 

Relevant links

Find out more about the Respiratory EHR group 

The new research program on inflammation and immunity is truly groundbreaking, uniting efforts across the four UK nations and exploring these critical health areas throughout the lifecourse. This initiative is not only set to advance our understanding but also promises to build significant capacity with numerous PhD studentships and internships, fostering the next generation of scientific leaders.

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Programme Theme(s): Describe, Intervene & Evaluate

Dr Ian Sinha is Inflammation and Immunity’s Lead researcher for Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.

A Consultant Respiratory Paediatrician at Alder Hey and an Honorary Associate Professor in Child Health at the University of Liverpool, Ian’s expertise and areas of interest focus on paediatric asthma, neonatal lung diseases, and the social determinants of respiratory health, particularly the impact of poverty on child health.

Ian has substantial experience in understanding and addressing health inequalities, including developing frameworks to address these issues in children and supporting ongoing advocacy work at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. 

Ian is dedicated to improving child health outcomes and holds several prominent national roles, including serving as the clinical lead for the Children and Young People's Workstream of the National Asthma and COPD Audit Programme and as a specialty advisor for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on asthma guidelines. Leveraging these networks and his experience, Ian is working closely with the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) team within Inflammation and Immunity, to develop a 4-nation paediatric PPI working group which will help inform project development and ensure health data are used appropriately to improve health outcomes for young people and their families.

I saw this as a fantastic opportunity to improve my research skills by being able to undertake a PhD exploring a public health level national intervention, aiming to improve outcomes for CYP with asthma and reduce inequalities in asthma.

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Programme Theme(s): Intervene & Evaluate

Project title: System-wide and data-driven approaches to improving asthma outcomes in children and young people. 

Dr Karl Holden is one of our programme’s PhD students, based at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. He is also a qualified doctor and paediatric registrar, having undertaken integrated clinical and academic training. 

The aim of Karl’s PhD project is to assess if system-wide (pilot programme in 8 ICBs in England) and data-driven approaches (use of risk stratification in primary care records) have been successful in: 

1. Improving clinical outcomes of asthma in Children and Young People (CYP); 
2. Reducing inequalities in these clinical outcomes 

What are ICBs?

Integrated Care Boards are NHS organisations responsible for:  

• Planning health services for their local population; 

• Managing the NHS budget; 

• Arranging for the provision of health services in a geographic area; 

There are 42 ICBs in England. Rather than ICBs, Scotland and Wales instead have regional heath boards. There are 14 health boards in Scotland and 7 in Wales. 

Find out more about ICBs 

Find out more about regional health boards in Scotland 

Find our more about health boards in Wales 

In the UK, most CYP living with asthma are treated in a primary care setting (seeing GPs and asthma nurses). This approach has been described as “fragmented and fatally fallible”, with the UK having the worst CYP asthma outcomes in Europe. Significant socioeconomic inequalities also exist. Even when national CYP asthma admission rates fall, the gaps between the least and most deprived areas increases. 

In 2021, NHS England published the National Bundle of Care for Asthma. This document outlined system-wide infrastructure and pathways to improve asthma outcomes, with themes including data and digital (e.g. being able to use data to create at-risk registers). As a result, a national, pilot scheme is being undertaken where 8 ICBs have received funding to recruit CYP asthma practitioners to facilitate: 

1. Work across the ICB and deliver key elements of the bundle; 
2. The use of risk stratification in primary care electronic health records to target intervention towards CYP at highest risk of poor outcomes 

It is these interventions that Karl will be evaluating. 

Alongside his PhD, Karl is also an associate Principal Investigator in a paediatric drug randomised control trial for severe asthma (The TREAT trial). Previous areas of research include: 

• Biomarkers of disease activity in preschool wheeze, fungal sensitatisation and disease activity in childhood asthma; 

• Involved with developing clinical characterisation protocol study for COVID-19 in adults, then children (Co-Investigator with the ISARIC programme) 

• Effect of air quality (housing, indoor and outdoor) on respiratory health in children 

Supervisor(s): 

• Professor Ian Sinha, Steering Group member (Alder Hey Children’s Hospital NHS Trust, University of Liverpool) 

• Dr. Dan Hawcutt (Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, University of Liverpool)