The National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD), developed after World War Two with support from the Population Investigation Committee (PIC) at LSE, celebrated a milestone last week - and the 70th birthdays of all its participants, who are the longest continually-studied birth cohort in the history of science having been tracked from their birth across one week in March 1946 to the present day.
Led by Dr James Douglas, with close support from LSE academic Dr David Glass, the now Medical Research Council’s longitudinal survey was set up less than a year after the end of the Second World War with two key aims: to understand long-term change in the national population in terms of fertility and to find how to improve the health and care of mothers and babies. Over the years the scope of the survey has grown significantly, with today’s researchers assessing both physical and cognitive capability as well as looking at participants about their mental health and wellbeing.
The Population Investigation Committee (PIC), a small independent research group which has been based at LSE since World War II[1], played a prominent role in establishing the parameters and survey questions. The NSHD’s first questionnaire was developed by members of the PIC sub-committee with LSE students also participating, helping with data coding and checking of the survey findings in 1946.
The NSHD has gone on to inform UK health care, education and social policy for 70 years, and is behind our understanding of many details that is are now widely acknowledged as fact.One such example is the data that showed the extensive differences in health between geographical areas and in mothers’ and babies’ health and survival in relation to socioeconomic circumstances. Through collecting data throughout the school years on measures of cognition and intelligence and teachers’ assessments of behaviour and attitudes to school work, the survey showed a great risk of under-achievement among bright children in poorer socio-economic families. The findings of have also revealed the significant dangers of smoking during pregnancy and the dangers of obesity.
Thanks to the 1946 ‘Douglas children’, as some have come to call themselves, more is being discovered now than ever before about what factors, from early life onwards, contribute to the risk of the commonest diseases of later life.
Read Michael Wadsworth’s paper ‘The origins and innovatory nature of the 1946 British national birth cohort study’ here:http://www.nshd.mrc.ac.uk/files/7114/4620/5846/Wadsworth_Origin_of_NSHD.pdf
For more on the Population Investigation Committee, see http://www.lse.ac.uk/socialPolicy/Researchcentresandgroups/PIC/historyPIC.aspx
More on the NSHD can be found here http://www.nshd.mrc.ac.uk/
The Wellcome Trust official PIC archive is held at the Wellcome Library and material on PIC is also held in the LSE Archives at http://www.lse.ac.uk/library/collections/home.aspx
Notes:
[1] PIC research staff first moved to LSE in 1937 after PIC Chairman, Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders, became Director of the School. PIC administration in 1946 followed David Glass’ (PIC Research Secretary) appointment as Reader in Demography at LSE.
Pic © Sarah Macmillan, Flickr
7 March 2016