Improving life chances & reducing child health inequalities: harnessing the potential of existing data (360G-Wellcome-205412_Z_16_Z)

I will address three questions crucial to tackling child health inequalities (HIs): \- What factors lie on the causal pathway between socio-economic circumstances and children’s health and parental health-related behaviours, and which are most likely to reduce HIs? \- Who: Can we better predict those most likely to develop poor health (and will this help to target interventions more fairly and efficiently)? \- How: To what extent can early years’ interventions, if rolled out at different scales (e.g. to everyone, those living in deprived areas, those at greatest risk), reduce HIs? Cutting-edge methods, and the novel application of traditional methods, will be applied in two complementary data sources: linked administrative data (in Greater Glasgow and Clyde – the UK’s largest health governing board and subject to the highest HIs in Western Europe) and three UK cohorts (Millennium Cohort Study, Growing Up in Scotland, Southampton Women’s Survey). Several aspects of child health (motor, social, cognitive and motor development; thinness, overweight and obesity; unintentional injuries) and parental health-related behaviours (immunisation; breastfeeding; smoking) will be examined. Maternal mental health, childcare and parenting will be investigated as mediating mechanisms that are amenable to intervention through early years’ services. Findings will inform local and national policy and practice.