Population-based cancer incidence and mortality rates and ratios among adults with intellectual disabilities in Scotland: a retrospective cohort study with record linkage.

: : To provide contemporary data on cancer mortality rates within the context of incidence in the population with intellectual disabilities. : : Scotland's 2011 Census was used to identify adults with intellectual disabilities and controls with records linked to the Scottish Cancer Registry and death certificate data (March 2011-December 2019). The control cohort without intellectual disabilities and/or autism were used for indirect standardisation and calculation of crude incident rates/crude mortality rates, and age-sex standardised incident rate ratios/standardised mortality ratios (SIR/SMR), with 95% CIs.

Understanding covid-19 outcomes among people with intellectual disabilities in England.

Background: Evidence from the UK from the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic showed that people with Intellectual Disabilities (ID) had higher rates of covid-19 mortality than people without ID. However, estimates of the magnitude of risk vary widely; different studies used different time periods; and only early stages of the pandemic have been analysed. Existing analyses of risk factors have also been limited.

Rates, causes and predictors of all-cause and avoidable mortality in 163 686 children and young people with and without intellectual disabilities: a record linkage national cohort study.

Objectives: To investigate mortality rates and associated factors, and avoidable mortality in children/young people with intellectual disabilities.

Design: Retrospective cohort; individual record-linked data between Scotland's 2011 Census and 9.5 years of National Records for Scotland death certification data.

Smartphone-based Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS): A methodological advance in surveying small or 'hard-to-reach' populations.

Producing statistically robust profiles of small or 'hard-to-reach' populations has always been a challenge for researchers. Since surveying the wider population in order to capture a large enough sample of cases is usually too costly or impractical, researchers have been opting for 'snowballing' or 'time-location sampling'. The former does not allow for claims to representativeness, and the latter struggles with under-coverage and estimating confidence intervals.

Understanding the post-2010 increase in food bank use in England: new quasi-experimental analysis of the role of welfare policy.

Background: The number of food banks (charitable outlets of emergency food parcels) and the volume of food distributed by them increased multi-fold in the United Kingdom (UK) since 2010. The overwhelming majority of users of food banks are severely food insecure. Since food insecurity implies a nutritionally inadequate diet, and poor dietary intake has been linked to a number of diseases and chronic conditions, the rise in the number of people using food banks is a phenomenon of significant importance for public health.