Paula Aucott

Area Deprivation Across the Life Course and Physical Capability in Midlife: Findings From the 1946 British Birth Cohort

Physical capability in later life is influenced by factors occurring across the life course, yet exposures to area conditions have only been examined cross-sectionally. Data from the National Survey of Health and Development, a longitudinal study of a 1946 British birth cohort, were used to estimate associations of area deprivation (defined as percentage of employed people working in partly skilled or unskilled occupations) at ages 4, 26, and 53 years (residential addresses linked to census data in 1950, 1972, and 1999) with 3 measures of physical capability at age 53 years: grip strength, standing balance, and chair-rise time. Cross-classified multilevel models with individuals nested within areas at the 3 ages showed that models assessing a single time point underestimate total area contributions to physical capability. For balance and chair-rise performance, associations with area deprivation in midlife were robust to adjustment for individual socioeconomic position and prior area deprivation (mean change for a 1-standard-deviation increase: balance, −7.4% (95% confidence interval (CI): −12.8, −2.8); chair rise, 2.1% (95% CI: −0.1, 4.3)). In addition, area deprivation in childhood was related to balance after adjustment for childhood socioeconomic position (−5.1%, 95% CI: −8.7, −1.6). Interventions aimed at reducing midlife disparities in physical capability should target the socioeconomic environment of individuals—for standing balance, as early as childhood.

Challenges in examining area effects across the life course on physical capability in mid-life: findings from the 1946 British Birth Cohort.

A major limitation of past work linking area socioeconomic conditions to health in mid-life has been the reliance on single point in time measurement of area. Using the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, this study for the first time linked place of residence at three major life periods of childhood (1950), young adulthood (1972), and mid-life (1999) to area-socioeconomic data from the nearest census years. Using objective measures of physical capability as the outcome, the purpose of this study was to highlight four methodological challenges of attrition bias, secular changes in socio-economic measures, historical data availability, and changing reporting units over time. In general, standing balance and chair rise time showed clear cross-sectional associations with residing in areas with high deprivation. However, it was the process of overcoming the methodological challenges, which led to the conclusion that in this example percent low social class occupations was the most appropriate measure to use when extending cross-sectional analysis of standing balance and chair rise to life course investigation.

Exposing the history of Europe: the creation of a structure to enable time-spatial searching of historical resources within a European framework

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of a knowledgebase supporting a prototype Europe‐wide time‐spatial search interface for historical resources. It discusses how this structure could be used to access other types of digital heritage content.Design/methodology/approach – By using a relational database with spatial capabilities, a multi‐lingual search structure has been created which supports a temporal map and a facetted browser, collaborative facilities and a heritage resource viewer, with links to online catalogues.Findings – Combining data from three states with very different histories identified the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. The frameworks flexibility means it could easily be re‐purposed to support front ends to other types of cultural content.Research limitations/implications – Due to the variability in the administrative unit source data, its initial integration required significant manipulation to achieve consistency; however, the benefits of data as...

On the organisation of geographical knowledge: Data models for gazetteers and historical GIS

Historical documents contain many geographical names, and text describing geographical relationships, but few coordinates or accurate maps. Historical GISs consequently contain much conjecture and anachronistic data. The paper outlines an alternative approach based on a formal representation of the textual information.

GB1900: Engaging the Public in Very Large Scale Gazetteer Construction from the Ordnance Survey “County Series” 1:10,560 Mapping of Great Britain

This theme issue is focused on semantic historical gazetteers, but “semantic gazetteers” should not be interpreted simply as meaning gazetteers which are represented in the languages of the semantic web, i.e., in Resource Description Framework (RDF) or Web Ontology Language (OWL). Defining semantic gazetteers as “URI-based” is substantially more meaningful: in this case, gazetteer entities are identified not primarily by a name or a location, but by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), meaning a string of text that is not only unique within the particular gazetteer, but works as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) within the World Wide Web (Hart and Dolbear 2013). This means that identifiers from different gazetteers can be used in combination, or translated between. Many of these potentials are being explored by the Pelagios project (Isaksen Simon, Barker, and de Soto Cañamares 2014).

PastPlace Historical Gazetteer

The PastPlace gazetteer is a subset of Wikidata, itself a systematization of Wikipedia, and so contains all the world’s “notable” places. To this have been linked historical place name “attestations”, meaning instances of a particular character string being used to refer to the place in a specified and usually dated historical map or other document. The system inherits much historical content from the Great Britain Historical GIS , and the main sources are described, but place name content can be extended globally through crowd-sourcing name attestations from historical maps: the related Old Maps Online project and GB1900 crowd-sourcing system are introduced. The article describes the Linked Data Applications Programming Interface by which this information is made accessible to computers, and more briefly the PastPlace web app for humans.

Evaluating the long-term consequences of air pollution in early life: geographical correlations between coal consumption in 1951/1952 and current mortality in England and Wales

Objective To evaluate associations between early life air pollution and subsequent mortality. Design Geographical study. Setting Local government districts within England and Wales. Exposure Routinely collected geographical data on the use of coal and related solid fuels in 1951–1952 were used as an index of air pollution. Main outcome measures We evaluated the relationship between these data and both all-cause and disease-specific mortality among men and women aged 35–74 years in local government districts between 1993 and 2012. Results Domestic (household) coal consumption had the most powerful associations with mortality. There were strong correlations between domestic coal use and all-cause mortality (relative risk per SD increase in fuel use 1.124, 95% CI 1.123 to 1.126), and respiratory (1.238, 95% CI 1.234 to 1.242), cardiovascular (1.138, 95% CI 1.136 to 1.140) and cancer mortality (1.073, 95% CI 1.071 to 1.075). These effects persisted after adjustment for socioeconomic indicators in 1951, current socioeconomic indicators and current pollution levels. Conclusion Coal was the major cause of pollution in the UK until the Clean Air Act of 1956 led to a rapid decline in consumption. These data suggest that coal-based pollution, experienced over 60 years ago in early life, affects human health now by increasing mortality from a wide variety of diseases.

OP17 Area Deprivation Across the Life Course and Cognitive Capability in Mid-Life: Findings from the 1946 British Birth Cohort

Background Recent work has shown that area conditions at single points in time have been found to be associated with cognitive capability outcomes. However, a life course perspective is required to take into account life time processes of cognitive development, changes in residence and secular trends of areas. Methods Data from the 1946 British Birth Cohort were used to estimate associations of area deprivation (indicated by % of employed people in each area in partly- or un-skilled occupations) at ages 4, 26 and 53 years (residential addresses linked to census data in 1950, 1972 and 1999) with three measures of cognitive capability at age 53 years: verbal ability [NART], memory and letter cancellation speed. Cross-classified multilevel models were fitted with individuals nested within areas at all three ages. Step-wise models were fitted to assess whether area deprivation was independent of area deprivation at prior time points and current and prior individual socioeconomic position (SEP). Results The percent of variance explained by lifetime area was 9.9% for NART and 6.8% for word learning scores. There was no variation across areas, or associations with, cancellation speed for any year. For the NART and word learning outcomes, associations were found between higher area deprivation and lower scores, independent of adjustment for individual social class at the same age (i.e. area deprivation at age 4 years adjustment for childhood SEP); however the longitudinal patterns differed. For the NART, an approximately 2 point lower mean score for a 1-standard deviation increase in area deprivation, for each age, was reduced by half but still apparent, when all three area deprivation measures were fitted in the same model [4 years: -1.0 (-1.8, -0.2); 26 years: -1.5 (-2.2, -0.7); 53 years: -1.4 (-2.1, -0.8)]. Yet all were attenuated with the addition of individual SEP measures at all three ages. For memory, both area deprivation at ages 4 and 53 years were independent of adjustment for area deprivation at the other 2 years [4 years: -0.9 (-1.5, -0.2) and 53 years: -1.9 (-2.6, -1.1)], and the latter was still apparent in full models containing all three area deprivation and individual SEP measures [-0.9 (-1.7, -0.2)]. Conclusion The deprivation of the area in which a person resides at different ages in their lives may affect cognitive capability in mid-life, with evidence that long-term exposure to area deprivation may negatively affect cognitive ageing (memory).

P1-42 Associations of area deprivation over the lifecourse and physical capability in mid-life: findings from the 1946 British birth cohort

Background Recent work has shown that factors across the whole of life influence physical capability in later life. Therefore, when investigating area socioeconomic effects on physical capability, area exposures should be assessed across the lifecourse to take account changes in residence and secular trends of an area. Methods Using data from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, we examined the relationship between area low social class (per cent partly- or un-skilled of all occupied in a local government district) at ages 4, 26, and 53 years [residence linked to census data for years 1951, 1971, and 2001) with objective measures of physical capability (grip strength, standing balance and chair rise time) at age 53 years. Results After adjustment for area at other years, a higher area low social class at 4 and 53 years was associated with decline in mean balance time of 4.4% (95% CI 0.6 to 8.1) and 7.6% (3.6 to 11.6), respectively, but only area at age 53 with higher chair rise time [mean change 1.8% (95% CI 0.0 to 3.6) at 53 years. Associations were reduced but still apparent after adjustment for individual occupational social class at the same three ages. There were no significant associations between area and grip strength. Conclusions For the first time, our study shows that living in a socioeconomically deprived area in early and later life adversely affect some measures of physical capability in mid-life. Future work is needed to explore potential mechanisms of area effects by age and physical capability measures.