MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health

Children face new and different threats to their health and wellbeing through conditions such as obesity that are becoming more frequent and are unlikely to have a simple cause. At the same time advances in scientific knowledge and clinical medicine have great potential to improve the health of children and their families. Health during childhood and later life is influenced by social, biological and emotional environments which act and change throughout pregnancy, childhood and adolescence, unique periods of growth and development. Thus research to understand the causes, outcome and prevention of these conditions requires complex statistical analyses and the development of new methods to investigate the role of genetic predisposition and environment and to support follow up to adult life. This grant for a MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health will support population scientists and biostatisticians working in this field to develop these new methods, to find better ways of translating scientific evidence to guide policies for children and to carry out policy-relevant research. It will also provide training for scientists of the future who wish to improve children’s health and well-being through high quality scientific research.

The proposed Collaborative Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health addresses an area of strategic importance ? the need to use research to inform strategies to improve the health and well being of children both during their childhood and their adult life. It links scientists who, by applying their understanding of the changes in health patterns and socio-demographic circumstances to the current policy context, can design and carry out research to inform such strategies. We will achieve this by forging new academic collaborations that bring together scientists from epidemiology, statistics, molecular and clinical genetics, informatics, and paediatric pharmacy. Through this unique collaboration we will address contemporary questions about children?s health and illness that are central to clinical practice, and to public health by conducting, and contributing to the application of, high quality interdisciplinary research. The Centre will develop capacity and sustainable expertise in relation to key methodological areas that have relevance to this research agenda, including statistical methods, genetic epidemiology, record linkage and policy research. These methodological developments will add value to our existing strong and internationally recognised research programmes in infections of the mother, her fetus and child; lifecourse and intergenerational epidemiology; and inherited, congenital and developmental disorders. They will also underpin new areas of research to be developed, including those relevant to the safety of medicines for children, the safety of new reproductive technologies for children, the causes and outcomes of sensorineural hearing loss in childhood, and the use of research in policy making. The Centre will engage patient groups, parents and young people in its mission at project, programme and Centre level. Our communication strategy will include the creation of an independent source of scientific expertise on children?s health for a range of key stakeholders, including parents. We will build research capacity by providing a strong and world class training environment in epidemiology, biostatistics and academic public health as applied to children.