ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2020
Association between home insulation and hospital admission rates: retrospective cohort study using linked data from a national intervention programme.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- A New Zealand Heat Pump Retrofit Programme: Warmer, Drier, Happier, Cheaper.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2026Article
- A spatiotemporal analysis of administrative emergency hospitalization data (2012-2021) to assess outreach service adequacy to elderly residential care homes in Hong Kong.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Housing Quality Improvement and Health Care Utilization: A Regression Discontinuity Study.Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] · 2026Article
- Housing and health in Israel: the need for local policy-oriented interdisciplinary research.Israel journal of health policy research · 2025Review
- Combination of housing type (detached houses vs flats) and tenure (owned vs rented) in relation to cardiovascular mortality: findings from a 6-year cohort study in Japan.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Effect of living in well-insulated warm houses on hypertension and cardiovascular diseases based on a nationwide epidemiological survey in Japan: a modelling and cost-effectiveness analysis.BMJ public health · 2024Article
- The rise and fall of excess winter mortality in New Zealand from 1876 to 2020.International journal of biometeorology · 2024Article
- He Kāinga Oranga: reflections on 25 years of measuring the improved health, wellbeing and sustainability of healthier housing.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2024Review
- The public health implications of the cost-of-living crisis: outlining mechanisms and modelling consequences.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2023Review
- Retrofitting home insulation reduces incidence and severity of chronic respiratory disease.Indoor air · 2022Article
- Trends in Excess Winter Mortality (EWM) from 1900/01 to 2019/20-Evidence for a Complex System of Multiple Long-Term Trends.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- The shifted focus of interest in the temperature-blood pressure relationship: from load to variability.Hypertension research : official journal of the Japanese Society of Hypertension · 2021Article
- The Interplay between Housing Environmental Attributes and Design Exposures and Psychoneuroimmunology Profile-An Exploratory Review and Analysis Paper in the Cancer Survivors' Mental Health Morbidity Context.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Excess Winter Mortality (EWM) as a Dynamic Forensic Tool: Where, When, Which Conditions, Gender, Ethnicity and Age.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesTo investigate whether retrofitting insulation into homes can reduce cold associated hospital admission rates among residents and to identify whether the effect varies between different groups within the population and by type of insulation.
designA quasi-experimental retrospective cohort study using linked datasets to evaluate a national intervention programme.
participants994 317 residents of 204 405 houses who received an insulation subsidy through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority Warm-up New Zealand: Heat Smart retrofit programme between July 2009 and June 2014.
main outcome measureA difference-in-difference approach was used to compare the change in hospital admissions of the study population post-insulation with the change in hospital admissions of the control population that did not receive the intervention over the same two timeframes. Relative rate ratios were used to compare the two groups.
results234 873 hospital admissions occurred during the study period. Hospital admission rates after the intervention increased in the intervention and control groups for all population categories and conditions with the exception of acute hospital admissions among Pacific Peoples (rate ratio 0.94, 95% confidence interval 0.90 to 0.98), asthma (0.92, 0.86 to 0.99), cardiovascular disease (0.90, 0.88 to 0.93), and ischaemic heart disease for adults older than 65 years (0.79, 0.74 to 0.84). Post-intervention increases were, however, significantly lower (11%) in the intervention group compared with the control group (relative rate ratio 0.89, 95% confidence interval 0.88 to 0.90), representing 9.26 (95% confidence interval 9.05 to 9.47) fewer hospital admissions per 1000 in the intervention population. Effects were more pronounced for respiratory disease (0.85, 0.81 to 0.90), asthma in all age groups (0.80, 0.70 to 0.90), and ischaemic heart disease in those older than 65 years (0.75, 0.66 to 0.83).
conclusionThis study showed that a national home insulation intervention was associated with reduced hospital admissions, supporting previous research, which found an improvement in self-reported health.
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