The INCLUDE Study: understanding how social exclusion affects health

Welcome to the information page for the ongoing INCLUDE study! See below for an overview of the project along with how to contact us if you have questions or would like more information.

For the INCLUDE study, a team of doctors and researchers at Trinity College Dublin and the HSE are working to understand how different kinds of social exclusion such as being homeless, being in prison, and/or using methadone impact the use of hospital services. We will do this by analysing past health, homelessness, and prison data.

To do so, St. James’s Hospital, the Mater Hospital, the HSE, the Irish Prisons Service, and Dublin City Council are combining information about people who have used their services. These data will be transferred securely from each partner organisation to the HSE where they will be safely stored and analysed by a very small number of HSE employees who are trained in data security and confidentiality.

We are going to use data on all patients admitted to St James’s Hospital and the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in 2024, and we will also use some information (names, dates of birth and address) from everyone registered with the Irish Prisons Management Service, Dublin City Council homeless list and the Central Treatment (methadone) List between 2014 and 2024. We will only keep identifying details (name, DOB, address) for as long as it takes us to check whether a particular patient on the list was also registered on the Irish Prisons, DCC Homeless or Central Treatment List. Once this has been done, all identifying details will be erased.

If you fall into any of these categories and DON’T want us to include your data in the study, please contact us either on 089 418 7860 or include@hse.ie, and, if we still have your identifying details, your information will be deleted from the study. 

More information is available from include@hse.ie or by phone 0894187860.