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. 2018 Jan 19;18(1):158.
doi: 10.1186/s12889-018-5031-7.

MINDMAP: establishing an integrated database infrastructure for research in ageing, mental well-being, and the urban environment

Mariëlle A Beenackers  1 , Dany Doiron  2   3   4 , Isabel Fortier  2 , J Mark Noordzij  5 , Erica Reinhard  6 , Emilie Courtin  6 , Martin Bobak  7 , Basile Chaix  8   9 , Giuseppe Costa  10   11 , Ulrike Dapp  12   13 , Ana V Diez Roux  14 , Martijn Huisman  15 , Emily M Grundy  16 , Steinar Krokstad  17   18 , Pekka Martikainen  19 , Parminder Raina  20 , Mauricio Avendano  8 , Frank J van Lenthe  5   21
Affiliations

MINDMAP: establishing an integrated database infrastructure for research in ageing, mental well-being, and the urban environment

Mariëlle A Beenackers et al. BMC Public Health. .

Abstract

Background: Urbanization and ageing have important implications for public mental health and well-being. Cities pose major challenges for older citizens, but also offer opportunities to develop, test, and implement policies, services, infrastructure, and interventions that promote mental well-being. The MINDMAP project aims to identify the opportunities and challenges posed by urban environmental characteristics for the promotion and management of mental well-being and cognitive function of older individuals.

Methods: MINDMAP aims to achieve its research objectives by bringing together longitudinal studies from 11 countries covering over 35 cities linked to databases of area-level environmental exposures and social and urban policy indicators. The infrastructure supporting integration of this data will allow multiple MINDMAP investigators to safely and remotely co-analyse individual-level and area-level data. Individual-level data is derived from baseline and follow-up measurements of ten participating cohort studies and provides information on mental well-being outcomes, sociodemographic variables, health behaviour characteristics, social factors, measures of frailty, physical function indicators, and chronic conditions, as well as blood derived clinical biochemistry-based biomarkers and genetic biomarkers. Area-level information on physical environment characteristics (e.g. green spaces, transportation), socioeconomic and sociodemographic characteristics (e.g. neighbourhood income, residential segregation, residential density), and social environment characteristics (e.g. social cohesion, criminality) and national and urban social policies is derived from publically available sources such as geoportals and administrative databases. The linkage, harmonization, and analysis of data from different sources are being carried out using piloted tools to optimize the validity of the research results and transparency of the methodology.

Discussion: MINDMAP is a novel research collaboration that is combining population-based cohort data with publicly available datasets not typically used for ageing and mental well-being research. Integration of various data sources and observational units into a single platform will help to explain the differences in ageing-related mental and cognitive disorders both within as well as between cities in Europe, the US, Canada, and Russia and to assess the causal pathways and interactions between the urban environment and the individual determinants of mental well-being and cognitive ageing in older adults.

Keywords: Ageing; Cohort studies; Data integration; Database; Mental well-being; Urban health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

MINDMAP will do secondary analyses on the data collected within the participating cohort studies. All participating cohort studies have originally received consent of the participants and ethical approval from their respected institutions: LASA received ethical approval by the Medical Ethical Committee of the Vrije Universiteit medisch centrum. HUNT received ethical approval from the Regional Committee for Medical Research Ethics, Mid-Norway. In addition, MINDMAP specific approval was received from the same committee. RECORD received ethical approval from the Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés. LUCAS received ethical approval from the Ethik-Kommission der Ärztekammer Hamburg. Additional MINDMAP specific ethical approval has been received from the same committee. Furthermore, MINDMAP specific consent is requested from the participants in the latest wave of LUCAS. HAPIEE received ethical approval from the Joint UCL/UCLH Committees on the Ethics of Human Research. Furthermore, all local institutes also provided ethical approval (the Jagiellonian University’s Committee on the Ethics of Clinical Research, the Kaunas Regional Biomedical Research Ethical Committee, and the Institution Ethical Commission of the Czech Republic – National Institute of Public Health). The Rotterdam study has received ethical approval from the Medical Ethical Committee of Erasmus MC. The GLOBE study has received a declaration of no objection from the same committee. CLSA has received ethical approval from the Hamilton Integrated Research Ethics Board. MESA was approved by the institutional review boards of all participating institutions (Johns Hopkins University, Northwestern University, Wake Forest University, University of California at Los Angeles, Columbia University, University of Minnesota) as well as the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overview of participating MINDMAP studies and their geographical locations
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Step-by-step process to establish the MINDMAP integrated database infrastructure
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
MINDMAP database infrastructure
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
MINDMAP data linkage process
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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