Birth Cohort Facility Project

The Birth Cohort Facility Project has received a landmark £28.5 million commitment from the Government's Large Facilities Capital Fund (LFCF). This investment adds to the £5 million committed by two leading research councils, the ESRC and Medical Research Council (MRC). This pioneering project will combine a new Birth Cohort Study now known as Life Study, and the Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources.

About Life Study

Life Study will track the growth, development, health, well-being and social circumstances of more than 100,000 UK babies and their families - from all walks of life – and will initially cover the period from pregnancy right through the early years of childhood. 

This new Study has been developed by a team comprising the UK’s leading biomedical and social scientists. It has been designed to reflect the rich diversity of ethnic identity and social backgrounds of babies being born in Britain today and include wider and more intensive study of children during their first year of life. Professor Carol Dezateux, Director of the MRC Centre of Epidemiology for Child Health at the Institute of Child Health, University College London and a consultant paediatrician at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, will lead the Birth Cohort Study Scientific Leadership.

For further information, please visit the Life Study website.

Life Study Strategic Advisory Committee

The Life Study Strategic Advisory Committee is charged with the responsibility and authority to ensure that the Study is developed, managed and maintained in a manner that maximises its benefit as a long term scientific resource of importance both nationally and internationally, and to coordinate funders' expectations and interests with the scientific demands that will be placed on this study.

Following competitive process, Professor Dame Janet Finch and Professor David Armstrong CBE have been appointed as Chair and Vice Chair of the Life Study Governing Board. Full membership details of the Life Study Governing Board can be found in the Strategic Advisory Committee membership (PDF, 72Kb) document.

About the Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (CLOSER)

Life Study will be strengthened by a new resource, the Cohort and Longitudinal Studies Enhancement Resources (CLOSER), directed by Professor Jane Elliott of the Institute of Education. This world leading resource is a consortium of the UK’s leading birth cohort and longitudinal studies and will play a vital role in maximising the use, value and impact of the data collected.

By establishing a national centre of excellence across each of these studies, researchers and policy makers will be able to make better comparisons over time and measure the changes across cohorts in child development, intergenerational social mobility and educational attainment.

The CLOSER will make the most of the UK’s existing investments in this area and ensure the UK's world leading position in life course and birth cohort studies. It will give unprecedented understanding of how economic, social and biological factors combine to explain human behaviour in key important areas such as health, poverty, child development and healthy ageing.

For further information please visit the CLOSER website.

Further information