A NEW RESEARCH project which aims to unravel how families in Bradford can live happier and healthy lives is underway.
The study, part of the city’s landmark Born in Bradford (BiB) programme, will collate data from the healthcare records of mums and babies.
Starting in Wrose, the project will be rolled out across the city to every pregnant woman by the end of 2019.
BiB Programme co-ordinator, Sally Bridges, said: “The new study will unify health, education and social data which will allow researchers to build up a complete picture of the health and wellbeing of mums and their babies across our city.
“Currently, over a person’s lifetime, these records are held separately by a variety of different services, including the likes of GPs, hospitals, health visitors and schools.
“By linking up this information from the woman and child’s records, researchers are able to build up a clearer picture of people’s lives and health, as well as exploring why some children are happy and healthy while others are not.
“The data will also provide clear direction to policymakers and hopefully help influence their decisions when setting up and planning new services here in Bradford.”
The information will be gathered automatically from routine medical, education and local authority records.
Researchers hope it will help provide answers to many unexplained questions relating to the city’s health, including:
Are there relationships between things that happen in pregnancy and children’s future health?
How many children in Bradford have asthma? Are children in some areas more likely to get asthma than children in other areas?
How many mums in Bradford experience postnatal depression? What could be done to help prevent depression or provide support for the family?
Women will be recruited to the study when they attend their midwifery appointments which take place at GPs’ surgeries, children centres or Bradford Royal Infirmary.
The new project will be rolled out across the city throughout 2019 and it’s hoped that in the future, 3,600 new mums will join every year.
The health researchers at Born in Bradford’s headquarters, located within the grounds of Bradford Royal Infirmary, are already tracking the lives of thousands of the city’s children into adulthood and beyond.
Born in Bradford Director, Professor John Wright, added: “Born in Bradford has become one of the leading health research studies in the country.
“Our new study will build on this success and invite all mothers and their new born babies to help us find better ways to improve the health of the city”
