Emily Lowthian

Swansea University | SWAN · School of Social Sciences - Department of Education and Childhood Studies

Introduction Research has investigated the association between time spent online and mental well‐being, however the nuances between specific online behaviors and well‐being have been less explored. This research examines how specific online behaviors (i.e., how young people are engaging online and with whom), are associated with one another, and ho...

Background Socioeconomic differences in the impact of alcohol consumption on health have been consistently reported in the so-called “alcohol harm paradox” (i.e., individuals from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (SES) drink more alcohol than individuals from lower SES, but the latter accrue more alcohol-related harm). Despite the severe health ris...

Transactional theory and the coercive family process model have illustrated how the parent-child relationship is reciprocal. Emerging research using advanced statistical methods has examined these theories, but further investigations are necessary. In this study, we utilised linked health data on maternal mental health disorders and explored their...

Objectives: We investigated SARS-CoV-2 infection trends, risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 vaccination uptake among school staff, students and their household members in Wales, UK. Design: Seven-day average of SARS-CoV-2 infections and polymerase chain reaction tests per 1000 people daily, cumulative incidence of COVID-19 vaccination upt...

Background: E-cigarettes are a popular smoking-cessation tool. Although less harmful than tobacco, use of e-cigarettes by non-smokers should be prevented. There is concern about the use of e-cigarettes by young people and that e-cigarettes may renormalise smoking. In May 2016, Tobacco Products Directive regulations aimed to reduce e-cigarettes' ap...

Background The CVD-COVID-UK consortium was formed to understand the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases through analyses of harmonised electronic health records (EHRs) across the four UK nations. Beyond COVID-19, data harmonisation and common approaches enable analysis within and across independent Trusted Research Environment...

Background From September 2021, Health Care Workers (HCWs) in Wales began receiving a COVID-19 booster vaccination. This is the first dose beyond the primary vaccination schedule. Given the emergence of new variants, vaccine waning vaccine, and increasing vaccination hesitancy, there is a need to understand booster vaccine uptake and subsequent bre...

Introduction Ethnicity information is recorded routinely in electronic health records (EHRs); however, to date, there is no national standard or framework for harmonisation of the existing records. Methods and analysis The national ethnicity-spine uses anonymised individual-level population-scale ethnicity data from 26 EHR available through the Sec...

Background: Several SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been shown to provide protection against COVID-19 hospitalization and death. However, some evidence suggests that notable waning in effectiveness against these outcomes occurs within months of vaccination. We undertook a pooled analysis across the four nations of the UK to investigate waning in vaccine...

There is a need for better understanding of the risk of thrombocytopenic, haemorrhagic, thromboembolic disorders following first, second and booster vaccination doses and testing positive for SARS-CoV-2. Self-controlled cases series analysis of 2.1 million linked patient records in Wales between 7th December 2020 and 31st December 2021. Outcomes we...

Background The CVD-COVID-UK consortium was formed to understand the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases through analyses of harmonised electronic health records (EHRs) across the four UK nations. Beyond COVID-19, data harmonisation and common approaches enables analysis within and across independent Trusted Research Environmen...

Objectives Examine if pre-COVID-19 pandemic (prior March 2020) health-related behaviours during primary school are associated with (1) being tested for SARS-CoV-2 and (2) testing positive between 1 March 2020 and 31 August 2021. Design Retrospective cohort study using an online cohort survey (January 2018 to February 2020) linked with routine PCR...

Parental substance use, that is alcohol and illicit drugs, can have a deleterious impact on child health and wellbeing. An area that can be affected by parental substance use is the educational outcomes of children. Current reviews of the literature in the field of parental substance use and children's educational outcomes have only identified a sm...

Background The number of Looked-After Children (LAC) in local authority care in the UK has risen dramatically over recent years, with stark inequalities. These children are at higher risk to experience poor health and educational outcomes. Few studies, none in the UK, have used registry-based data at an individual level to assess how socioeconomic...

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a spotlight on existing and enduring health inequalities experienced by different ethnic groups. There has been a longstanding call to generate and improve the use of ethnicity data available across different data sources, in order to improve our understanding of health risks, behaviours and outcomes. We used multip...

Objectives Research on bi-directional associations between self-reported caregiver mental health and child development is mixed. Through linkage of a cohort study and primary care data, we examine whether maternal mental health diagnoses, treatment and symptoms are bi-directionally associated with child development, namely emotional and conduct pro...

Objectives Mental wellbeing can deteriorate throughout adolescence; females and children from low-income families more likely to experience mental health conditions. Views of greenspace from home positively impact cognition, but links with wellbeing has not been explored in children. We linked environment and survey data for 14 year olds in Wales,...

Background Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has disproportionately affected people with mental health conditions. Aims We investigated the association between receiving psychotropic drugs, as an indicator of mental health conditions, and COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Method We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of a prospective cohort of the Nort...

Background: Several countries restricted the administration of ChAdOx1 to older age groups in 2021 over safety concerns following case reports and observed versus expected analyses suggesting a possible association with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST). Large datasets are required to precisely estimate the association between Coronavirus Di...

Introduction The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which emerged in December 2019, has caused millions of deaths and severe illness worldwide. Numerous vaccines are currently under development of which a few have now been authorised for population-level administration by several countries. As of 20 September 2021, over 48 million people have received t...

Objectives Examine if prior health-related behaviours during primary school are associated with being tested for SARS-CoV-2 and testing positive during adolescence. Design Retrospective cohort study using an online cohort survey (1 April 2014 to 28 February 2020) linked to routine PCR SARS-CoV-2 test results (1 March 2020 to 31 August 2021) Setti...

Evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on clinical coding completeness and lag within hospital admissions data https://www.adruk.org/fileadmin/uploads/adruk/Documents/Data_Insights/Data_Insight_Patient_Episode_Database_for_Wales_Clinical_Coding_January_2022.pdf

Background While population estimates suggest high vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection, the protection for health care workers, who are at higher risk of SARS-CoV-2 exposure, is less understood. Methods We conducted a national cohort study of health care workers in Wales (UK) from 7 December 2020 to 30 September 2021. We examined up...

Background Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are negatively associated with a range of child health outcomes. In this study, we explored associations between five individual ACEs and child mental health diagnoses or symptoms. ACEs included living with someone who had an alcohol-related problem, common mental health disorder or serious mental ill...

Purpose: Research demonstrates a strong socioeconomic gradient in health and well-being. However, many studies rely on unidimensional measures of socioeconomic status (SES)(e.g. educational qualifications, household income), and there is often a more limited consideration of how facets of SES combine to impact well-being. This paper develops a mult...

To date no study has examined time trends in adolescent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and energy drinks, or modelled change in inequalities over time. The present study aimed to fill this gap by identifying historical trends among secondary school students in Wales, United Kingdom. The present study includes 11-16 year olds who completed...

(1) Background: This study examines the associations between risk behaviours and adolescent emotional and physical dating and relationship violence (DRV) victimisation and perpetration, and how these vary by gender. The risk behaviours explored include bullying, cyberbullying, sexting, alcohol, and cannabis use; (2) Methods: Cross-sectional self-re...

Background Children adopted from care are more likely to have experienced early adversity, but little is known about the impact of early adversity on later post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms. Objective To investigate sub-groups of adversity in a sample of adopted children and examine the association with later PTS symptoms. Participants and set...

Background Young people's experimentation with e-cigarettes has increased in recent years, although regular use remains limited. EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) regulations introduced packet warnings, advertising restrictions, and regulated nicotine strength from 2016, in part due to concerns regarding use by young people. This paper examines e...

Background: While tobacco smoking has declined among UK youth in recent decades, cannabis use has begun to show some growth. Given their interrelationship, growth in cannabis use may act as a barrier to continued reduction in youth smoking. This paper assesses recent tobacco and cannabis use trends in Wales, and their association, to explore wheth...

Previous measures of parental substance use have often paid limited attention to the co-occurrence of alcohol and drugs, or to the between-parent dynamics in the use of substances. These shortcomings may have important implications for our understandings of the relationship between parental substance use and child wellbeing. Using data from the Avo...

The effects of psychoactive substance abuse are not limited to the user, but extend to the entire family system, with children of substance abusers being particularly at risk. This meta-analysis attempted to quantify the longitudinal relationship between parental alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and child well-being, investigating variation across a...

Objectives To examine whether during a period of limited e-cigarette regulation and rapid growth in their use, smoking began to become renormalised among young people. Design Interrupted time-series analysis of repeated cross-sectional time-series data. Setting Great Britain Participants 248 324 young people aged approximately 13 and 15 years, f...

The impact of psychoactive substance abuse is not limited to the user, but extends to the entire family system with children of substance abusers being particularly at risk. This meta-analysis aimed to quantify the longitudinal relationship between parental alcohol, tobacco, and drug use and child wellbeing, investigating variation across a range o...

Background Small yet significant impacts of e-cigarettes on population smoking cessations rates indicate promise for harm reduction. However, non-smoking young people are increasingly experimenting with e-cigarettes, and while regular use remains rare, arguments for regulation have been driven by fears that e-cigarettes re-normalize smoking. Others...