UK Primary Care Recording of Wider Health Determinants, Compared to 2011 and 2021 Censuses

17.2 million patient records from the UK's CPRD primary care databases were analyzed for the recording of wider health determinants like country of birth and sexual orientation. The study, authored by Eleanor L. Axson, found recording proportions ranging from 0.11% for gender identity to 42.92% for language in 2021-2. This descriptive cross-sectional study compares these figures against UK Census data from 2011 and 2021.

Use Cases

• Assessing data completeness for social determinants of health in electronic health records based on the described recording proportions.
• Benchmarking primary care data against national census data for demographic characteristics like country of birth or religion.
• Investigating temporal trends in the recording of sensitive attributes like sexual orientation or gender identity between 2011 and 2021.
• Comparing data quality between different primary care database systems (CPRD Gold vs. CPRD Aurum) for socio-demographic variables.

Strengths

• Large scale, with over 17 million patient records analyzed for the 2011 Census date.
• Provides specific, quantified recording proportions for eight distinct wider determinants of health (e.g., 3.65% for country of birth, 1.46% for sexual orientation).
• Enables direct comparison with authoritative UK Census data from two time points (2011 and 2021).
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license for reuse.

Limitations

• Row count for the downloadable data file is unknown, limiting suitability assessment for specific analytical tasks.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics and structure must be inferred after download.
• The 1.1 MB file size suggests the downloadable content may be a summary document rather than the full underlying patient-level dataset.

Provenance

Source

Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) Gold and Aurum primary care databases.

Collection Method

Descriptive cross-sectional study of acceptable, currently registered patients on UK Census dates.

Time Range

Study dates align with the 2011 UK Census and the 2021-2 UK Census.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-18 05:43:06; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United Kingdom.