News

NPEU Cost of Stillbirth Study presentation wins award at International Health Economics conference

An NPEU study presented at the Spanish Health Economics conference in June has won the award for Best Oral Presentation.  Senior Health Economist Oliver Rivero-Arias presented the paper “Healthcare and Wider Societal Implications of Stillbirth: A Population-Based Cost of Illness Study”, a collaboration involving the NPEU researchers Oliver Rivero-Arias, Helen Campbell and Jenny Kurinczuk. The study, published earlier this year in BJOG, found that the costs of stillbirth are significant, affecting the health service, parents, professionals, and society with the annual UK cost for all stillbirths at £724 million.

The prize fund of £1,300 will be donated to Sands stillbirth & neonatal death charity with whom the team collaborated during the study.

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and other unexplained infant death: nearly 5-fold variation in risk between different ethnic groups in England and Wales

There is evidence of large differences between ethnic groups in the risk of unexplained death in infancy, including Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

Mary Kroll, Maria Quigley, Jenny Kurinczuk, Yangmei Li and Jennifer Hollowell at the NPEU, University of Oxford, and Nirupa Dattani at City, University of London, looked at newly-available data for 4.6 million babies born in England and Wales. They found the lowest risk of unexplained death in infancy in Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, White Non-British and Black African babies; intermediate risk in White British babies; and highest risk in Mixed Black-African-White, Mixed Black-Caribbean-White, and Black Caribbean babies.

The disparity of risk did not seem to be explained by patterns of preterm birth, mother’s age, or socio-economic position, and may reflect cultural differences in infant care.

Read the full results in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Different ways of using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS)

The 10-item Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), which relies on self-report, is an established screening tool for monitoring depressive symptoms in the postnatal period. It is usually used as a single score with variable cut-offs and has been used in longitudinal research studies, in many cross sectional studies on maternal wellbeing, as well as in clinical practice.

Inconsistent findings and replication difficulties have limited use of the EPDS as a multi-dimensional tool.

A newly published study by Maggie Redshaw and Colin Martin focuses on the factor structure and different models that have been reported in identifying possible dimensions within the scale. Participants were two samples of postpartum women in England assessed at three months and six months using 2016 Maternity Survey data. The findings indicate a multidimensional measure, with a three-factor seven-item EPDS model, reflecting anxiety, depression and anhedonia (a reduced ability to feel pleasure) fitting the data best in both datasets. The use of the sub-scale components identified requires further investigation with a range of populations in both research and clinical practice contexts.     

You can read the study "Establishing a coherent and replicable measurement model of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale" which is published in Psychiatry Research.