ALSPAC The Avon Longitudinal Study for Parents and Children: An international resource for population genomic and lifecourse epidemiology. Core programme support 2014-2019. (360G-Wellcome-102215_Z_13_Z)

The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) is a prospective cohort study with unprecedented scope and detail of information on thousands of people from before birth through to early adulthood, on their parents and now on their children. It is an internationally valued resource at the forefront of population-based research. ALSPAC allows the investigation of developmental trajectories marking critical periods in human life, the genetic and epigenetic factors contributing to heal th and disease and the environmental exposures which form the context within which these processes act. As ALSPAC participants enter adulthood and start having children, the study's potential to contribute to scientific discovery is expanding, giving a greater capacity to explore links between current and future health and the intergenerational components of health and disease. ALSPAC is unequivocally the richest open-access epidemiological resource in the world. Our goals are to ensure that ALS PAC (i) is sustained, (ii) has participation maximised and (iii) is enhanced. These goals will be delivered by follow-up of the original cohort through clinic assessment, questionnaires and record linkage, data collection on their children, consolidation of GWAS data on all participants and the development of epigenomics research.