Northern Ireland is launching a long-term health study that will track thousands of schoolchildren and older adults to uncover why some people stay healthy while others fall ill. This matters because Northern Ireland suffers some of the UK's worst health inequalities, yet its uniquely integrated health and social care system—where the same body manages hospitals, GPs, and social services—offers a rare opportunity to study how social conditions, biology, and behaviour combine to cause chronic disease. The research fills a gap: most studies look at these factors in isolation, not together. If successful, the project will produce two major new datasets—one following children from school into adulthood, another tracking older people through retirement and loss of independence—that researchers can mine for decades. It will also demonstrate how to link existing NHS, education, and census records to answer public health questions without costly new surveys. The practical payoff could be smarter, cheaper interventions—for example, targeting neighbourhood improvements or school programmes that actually reduce heart disease and diabetes rates, rather than just treating them after they appear.
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Our mission is to build capacity for public health research, strengthen the evidence for public health policy and practice and to improve the health of the population. Our aims are to ensure that our research is excellent while extending its reach and impact. Therefore our strategy and objectives are: (1) to expand and develop our staff and equip them with the skills for public health research; (2) to build on a platform of excellence in key areas {exploiting existing data; social causes of health and disease; and health behaviours}, extending our research infrastructure and strengthening themes that are important to our partners and funders; (3) to ensure our partners are actively engaged in the research process; (4) to work more closely with the other UKCRC Centres of Excellence to ensure that the initiative delivers its objectives for national and international leadership in the field; (5) to incrementally increase our grant income to ensure longer term sustainability. Our priority will be to use the unique opportunities that exist in Northern Ireland, with its distinctive approach to integrated health and social services and well connected civic and public sector structures, to research the social and biological causes of chronic disease and the main causes of inequalities in health experienced in the UK. We will leave a legacy for future public health research by: (6) surveying and following up a large sample of school children in Northern Ireland to study the neighbourhood, school, family and individual influences on their behaviour, their health and achievements; (7) by surveying and following up a large sample of older people to find out what influences their ability to work, when they retire, their independence, their health and their social and economic wellbeing; (8) working out how best to undertake public health research by using linkages between data already collected by public bodies like the NHS and others; and (9) by showing the benefits of designing and scientifically evaluating novel public health interventions in partnership those working directly with the public, across different public sectors, and with the public themselves. In so doing we are creating opportunities for young researchers to practice the skills necessary for high quality public health research and for them to establish a body of credible work that will help them become independent researchers. We will also demonstrate the added value of bringing researchers from many different backgrounds together around a common purpose and provide a bridge between the academic and non-academic communities to ensure that new knowledge is translated into actions that can improve health.
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