SSM ECRs featuring… Dr Mirjam Allik!

Dr Mirjam Allik is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow.

Dr Mirjam Allik

University of Glasgow

Research Fellow

SSM member since: On and off since 2014

SSM participation: 2014, 2016 & 2021 ASM, ECR workshop 2020 and also abstract reviewer for many years

Topics of interest: Children and young people’s health, health inequalities, care experienced children, using R for public health

What inspired you to pursue a career in public health?
I came to public health by accident. I did my degree in political science, focusing on gender inequalities in political representation and quantitative methods using R. After graduation I followed my partner to Glasgow. I had become very disillusioned with political science and looked for any kind of data analysis work. I was hired by the MRC/CSO Social and Public Sciences Unit at UofG as a data analyst to update the Carstairs score, one of the first ever deprivation measures. I had no idea what deprivation measures or health inequalities were, but soon saw the importance of this work. While working on this project I also noted that small areas with high proportion of communal establishment populations had very high mortality. This is not surprising for older people who might be living in care homes, but this was also the case for children and young people. It sparked my interest in the health of care experienced children and surprisingly, there was very little research on it. Years later, while my personal relationship has ended, I am still at Glasgow, leading a data linkage study on the health of care experienced children.

What excites you about working in research now?
Using linked administrative data, we are learning so much new right now about how care experience is related to health. Similar projects are underway in all parts of the UK and what is so shocking is how similar our results are and how vast the differences in health are between the care experienced and not care experienced children and youth. I believe that as we dig deeper into the data we can come up with quite specific evidence-based suggestions for policy interventions and hopefully this work will make lives better for thousands of children across Scotland and the UK.

What area of social medicine/public health are you interested in?
The effect of socioeconomic inequalities and more recently, the effect of experiencing social care on health have been the key themes in my work. As many other, I am a strong believer in open, reproducible research, including sharing and developing code. In the past year I have been more involved in knowledge exchange and engagement. It is difficult to do engagement well and meaningfully, but I’ve realised how important it is if our research is to have an impact later on.

Can you tell us a bit about a project you’re working on now?
In recent months we have found that health inequalities between care experienced and not care experienced children and young people are not explained by differences in deprivation. In fact, deprivation seems to have a completely different impact on hospitalisations in the care experienced cohort – for example, an increase in deprivation seems to reduce psychiatric clinic attendances and antidepressant prescriptions. This is not the case for other children, for whom hospital attendances and prescriptions increase with deprivation. It has raised questions about access to health services among the care experienced population.

What do you hope this will lead to?
To date, our work has raised more questions than it has answered, and I believe good research should do that. We are grappling with a very complex story but with high-quality longitudinal data we hope that in a few years’ time we have a much better sense on how health is linked to care experiences. For example, by linking hospitalisations and prescriptions to specific care episodes and types, we will be able to say if health inequalities are already present at birth and before entering care, or whether they increase/decrease during and/or after leaving care.

Bonus question from SSM member Will Ball: What’s one thing outside of your research which people might not know about you?
People say when the Google me, they find two types of results, my research and Celtman. I was interested in doing triathlons for a long time, but I only took it up more seriously while in Glasgow. Then I heard about Celtman, an extreme ironman in Torridon, North-West Scotland. I became slightly obsessed with the idea of doing it and I’ve now done it three times in all kinds of weather. When I find myself stuck with work or life, the memories of training and taking it all in on the race day with my team help me work through difficulties.

To keep up to date with Mirjam, follow her on Twitter @AllikMirjam or get in touch via email.

SSM ECR features is a blog series that celebrates early career researchers. Each month we meet a member we admire, learn more about their work and find out what and who inspires them. To find out more visit socsocmed.org.uk/blog or email ecr.ssm@gmail.com.