Born in Bradford’s Better Start: an experimental birth cohort study to evaluate the impact of early life interventions

BMC Public Health

Study Protocol

Melanie Astin¹  Gill Thornton²  Michaela Howell²  Dagmar Waiblinger³  Eleonora Uphoff³  Josie Dickerson³  Dan Mason³  Rosemary R. C. McEachan³  Philippa K. Bird³  John Wright³  Maria Bryant⁴  Kate E. Pickett⁵  Tracey Bywater⁵  Neil Small⁶  Debbie A. Lawlor⁷  Claudine Bowyer-Crane⁸  Pinki Sahota⁹ 

[1] BD4 Family, BD4 Community Trust, Bradford, UK;Better Start Bradford, Bradford Trident, Bradford, UK;Born in Bradford, Bradford Institute for Health Research, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, BD9 6RJ, Bradford, UK;Born in Bradford, Bradford Institute for Health Research, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, BD9 6RJ, Bradford, UK;Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK;Department of Health Sciences, The University of York, York, UK;Faculty of Health Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, UK;MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol and School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK;Psychology in Education Research Centre, Department of Education, The University of York, York, UK;School of Clinical and Applied Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK;

关键词: Birth cohort;    Trials within cohort;    Quasi-experimental;    Inequalities;    Early years interventions;    Child health;    Child development;    Social;    Emotional;    Communication;    Language;    Obesity;    Nutrition;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-016-3318-0

 received in 2016-06-29, accepted in 2016-07-08,  发布年份 2016

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEarly interventions are recognised as key to improving life chances for children and reducing inequalities in health and well-being, however there is a paucity of high quality research into the effectiveness of interventions to address childhood health and development outcomes. Planning and implementing standalone RCTs for multiple, individual interventions would be slow, cumbersome and expensive. This paper describes the protocol for an innovative experimental birth cohort: Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS) that will simultaneously evaluate the impact of multiple early life interventions using efficient study designs. Better Start Bradford (BSB) has been allocated £49 million from the Big Lottery Fund to implement 22 interventions to improve outcomes for children aged 0–3 in three key areas: social and emotional development; communication and language development; and nutrition and obesity. The interventions will be implemented in three deprived and ethnically diverse inner city areas of Bradford.MethodThe BiBBS study aims to recruit 5000 babies, their mothers and their mothers’ partners over 5 years from January 2016-December 2020. Demographic and socioeconomic information, physical and mental health, lifestyle factors and biological samples will be collected during pregnancy. Parents and children will be linked to their routine health and local authority (including education) data throughout the children’s lives. Their participation in BSB interventions will also be tracked. BiBBS will test interventions using the Trials within Cohorts (TwiCs) approach and other quasi-experimental designs where TwiCs are neither feasible nor ethical, to evaluate these early life interventions. The effects of single interventions, and the cumulative effects of stacked (multiple) interventions on health and social outcomes during the critical early years will be measured.DiscussionThe focus of the BiBBS cohort is on intervention impact rather than observation. As far as we are aware BiBBS is the world’s first such experimental birth cohort study. While some risk factors for adverse health and social outcomes are increasingly well described, the solutions to tackling them remain elusive. The novel design of BiBBS can contribute much needed evidence to inform policy makers and practitioners about effective approaches to improve health and well-being for future generations.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2016