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Babies line up for health project
A GROUNDBREAKING project to track the health of 10,000 babies in Bradford has recruited 3,600 infants in its first year.
The Born in Bradford (BiB) project, which is unprecedented in its scale, was launched a year ago to help understand the causes of illness.
It aims to follow the children for as long as possible through childhood and adolescence into adulthood.
Members of the project team have now achieved more than a third of their recruitment target representing ethnic groups from across Bradford's multi-cultural population.
Programme manager Pauline Raynor said: "The people of Bradford have been fantastic and over 80 per cent of those approached have willingly consented to become members of the Born in Bradford cohort – all with the same aim in mind to improve the health and wellbeing of the children in the city.
"The first year has been very eventful – we have witnessed the start of the project and the birth of the first BiB babies."
The project team is now trying to recruit more fathers who will be weighed and measured to calculate their Body Mass Index and asked to complete a lifestyle and health questionnaire.
They will also be asked to give a saliva sample to allow researchers to look at links between family history of genetic disease and DNA.
The BiB project, which supports the work of Bradford's Infant Mortality Commission, was set up because the city's infant mortality rate is around twice the national average.
Its first year has seen two important studies get underway in conjunction with universities.
Research to examine the levels of physical activity of pregnant mothers, in collaboration with the University of Loughborough, has recruited about 60 women who were provided with a pedometer to wear for seven days to measure their movements and heartbeat.
A second study, which was recently launched by Imperial College in London, is examining how much air pollution and exposure to chemicals in water might affect a baby's growth.
Fifty pregnant mothers who attend the antenatal clinic at Bradford Royal Infirmary will be recruited to take part.
Next month a study will begin to measure the size of babies' kidneys when they are 34 weeks old to see whether there is any link to renal disease.
And the University of Leeds is working with Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to investigate how women's experience of physical symptoms in pregnancy may be
associated with emotional or social difficulties they are also experiencing.
Helen Brown, assistant director of intelligence and analysis for Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust, whose team is carrying out the data collection for BiB, said: "The beauty of this project is that it will drive up the standards of the data collected around child health in general, in areas such as maternity and primary care.
"It should lead to a better, more comprehensive analysis of a whole range of information relating to the health needs of children across Bradford.
"The results will not only be useful to the project, but also to public health in general, with the ultimate aim of improving the health of all children in the district and beyond."
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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