Cold homes research
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The impact of cold homes on the health service
IRAS ID
276110
Contact name
J Wall
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
BEIS
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 9 months, 31 days
Research summary
The health impacts of living in cold homes project aims to quantify any link between cold homes and visits to hospital from households in England. The project will examine if people living in underheated homes require more hospital care compared to similar households who heat their homes to adequate temperatures.
The project aims to link household level data from BEIS, DWP and NHS digital to establish whether there is link between vulnerable and low income homes that use less heating energy than required for the size of property and the frequency of hospital visits and explore ways to quantify the difference.
BEIS hold data on energy consumption. DWP hold benefits data. BEIS and DWP data will be linked in order to identify and reduce the English data set to low income and vulnerable groups. The reduced BEIS dataset will be linked to Hospital episode data to test for differences in hospital episodes between homes that underheat compared to those that don't.
The project aims to answer the following research questions:
1. Is there a difference in frequency or amount of time spent in hospital (and subsequent cost) between underheated and warm homes?
2. Is there a reduction in frequency or time spent at hospital from underheated homes who subsequently improve their energy efficiency?REC name
East Midlands - Leicester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EM/0141
Date of REC Opinion
3 Jun 2020
REC opinion
Unfavourable Opinion