Exploring Veterans' physical and mental health needs within the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD)

The study will explore whether the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) can be used to identify Veterans and their health needs using electronic general practice (GP) records, and how they differ to those who have not served in the Armed Forces.

This project aims to examine the feasibility and utility of using the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a service that collects anonymised patient data from a network of GP practices across the UK, for Veterans’ health research. Additionally, it will look to determine and characterise the physical and mental health outcomes of Veterans and explore whether they are comparatively different to a non-Veteran group.  

Cohort study assembled from electronic health records using longitudinal data analysis (cox regression using time-to-event data).

• What is the feasibility, validity, and utility of the CPRD to determine Veterans within the UK primary care system?
• To what extent are the mental and physical health profiles of veterans accessing primary healthcare different to non-Veterans?
• What are the temporal trends in the prevalence and incidence rate of common long-term conditions (LTC) among military Veterans, compared to non-Veterans?
• What key clinical, behavioural, and socio-demographic factors explain differences in LTC rates and outcomes in Veterans, compared to non-Veterans?
• What is the added benefit of linking the CPRD with other datasets in terms of improved detection of physical and mental health needs, and maximising completeness of key socio-demographic characteristics?

70,000 Veterans registered with a GP practice participating in the CPRD with a sample of non-Veterans for comparison purposes.