From March 2020 individuals, wider society and health care systems have all been seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (WHO, 2020). It is likely that the pandemic has more severely impacted on people with prior mental health problems: generally research suggests that, pre-pandemic, people with Severe Mental Illness (SMI) (here we include schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and major depressive disorder) could expect to experience considerable social exclusion, poor physical health and die up to 20 years...

Older people are at high risk for Covid-19 and may have been impacted (and psychologically distressed) by the quarantine - entailing disconnection from family, community and usual health, social support and planned treatments. These may be amplified for people in rural areas where services are limited and both transport and digital-based communication services relatively poor. These issues may be more challenging for people living with dementia, generally associated with ageing, functional decline (Melis et al.,...

Antidepressant exposure is high among women of childbearing age in Northern Ireland. A preliminary analysis of Health and Social Care Business Services Organisation Enhanced Prescribing Database has estimated a prevalence rate at 19.2% among women aged 15-45 years for July 2008 – February 2010. It is important to regularly monitor medicinal drug use among women of childbearing age and those in early pregnancy because the teratogenicity of most prescription drugs is undetermined and many pregnancies...

Recent epidemiological research highlights the importance of area factors on population health, with deprived areas having a greater proportion of physically and mentally ill inhabitants. One explanation is that these areas promote detrimental health behaviours, but increasingly the influence of individual characteristics are of interest. The social drift hypothesis suggests that individuals with poor health may migrate to particular areas, whilst selective migration suggests that the ‘healthy’ move out; collectively these effects can produce distributions...

The EPD is an integrated patient-centred electronic record of all drugs prescribed by General Practitioners in Northern Ireland. Using the EPES database this project will analyse antibiotic prescribing patterns for the 12 months ending May 2010. It will examine variations in use of antibiotics by individual socio-demographic characteristics and area characteristics, to help to inform the management of antibiotics prescribing in Northern Ireland.