Two former Golspie High School pupils at forefront of UK governments' Covid care home research
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Two former Golspie High School pupils have collaborated on a project which is now informing governments over care home deaths from Covid-19.
Amazingly, when starting out on the project, the two did not realise their Sutherland connection because they were put in touch with each other by a mutual colleague who did not know their school background.
Entitled "COVID-19 mortality and long-term care: a UK comparison", the UK wide study was commissioned by the International Long-Term Care Policy Network.
It has been used to inform and steer policy for the four national governments.
David Bell, a native of Dornoch who also attended the town's Academy, and David Henderson, formerly of Golspie, have been praised for what has been called "very important research."
David Bell is a professor of economics at the University of Stirling and led the team there in the research. He is the son of the late James Bell, Dornoch, and his wife Jessie, who died in June aged 98. Because of lockdown, Professor Bell was unable to attend her funeral which was presided over by Rev Susan Brown at the graveside.
After leaving Golspie High School, Professor Bell studied at Aberdeen University and later the London School of Economics. He worked at various universities, including spells at St Andrews, Strathclyde, Warwick and Glasgow before settling down at Stirling. He is soon to retire.
David Henderson (42) is the son of former Northern Times editor James Henderson and his wife Christine.
On leaving school he served in the 1st Battalion the Highlanders (Seaforth, Gordons and Camerons) for seven years
He worked in various roles in drama production for the BBC, STV, and numerous independent companies.
He started his nursing career in 2006 in Glasgow before completing his BSc at the Highland Campus of the University of Stirling (now UHI) in 2009. For a while he worked in the high dependency unit at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
He obtained a PG Cert in Advanced Practice from the University of Dundee before completing a Masters by Research (Health) again through the University of Stirling.
David completed his PhD at the Urban Big Data Centre at the University of Glasgow in 2019. His thesis entitled “Multimorbidity and social care: exploiting emerging administrative datasets in Scotland” was the first project in the UK to link health and social care data on a national scale.
He now works as a Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University and is affiliated with the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research.
Co-authors of the report which was published last week, Professor Bell said David Henderson "did all the heavy lifting on data analysis and visualisation."
The researchers analysed deaths from the week beginning March 9, when the first UK death from coronavirus happened, until almost the end of June.
At the peak of care home deaths, in weeks 15 to 18, up to 116 per cent more people died than expected in English care homes.
That compared to a peak of 80 per cent extra deaths in Scotland, 76 per cent in Wales and 66 per cent in Northern Ireland.
