Associated organisationsBradford Hospitals NHS Trust · Bradford Institute for Health Research · Murdoch Children's Research Institute · Newcastle University · University of YorkEurope PMC affiliations are not treated as award recipients or mapped locations.
Funding£4.5M
PeriodApr 2025 — Mar 2033
In plain English
AI plain-English summary
A child born into poverty in Bradford today is more likely to develop health problems and fall behind at school than a wealthier peer, and the UK’s existing support system has not closed that gap. This project tackles a stubborn problem: why decades of early-years interventions have failed to reduce childhood inequalities, especially after recent shocks like austerity, the pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis. The researchers will follow more than 5,500 ethnically diverse children from the Born in Bradford’s Better Start cohort—recruited between 2016 and 2024—as they enter middle childhood (ages 7–8). By collecting fresh data and using creative methods, they aim to uncover exactly how contemporary social and economic pressures shape children’s health, wellbeing, and learning. If successful, the work could show which combinations of existing interventions actually work for disadvantaged families, and why. That evidence would help the UK’s billions in preventative spending hit the right targets—potentially reshaping how health visitors, schools, and social services coordinate support. This is applied, policy-relevant research with a direct line to improving children’s everyday lives.
View original technical description
Our vision is to conduct discovery research to better understand how to effectively intervene to create a healthier, happier, and fairer future for socially disadvantaged children. Socially disadvantaged children in high income countries experience poorer health, wellbeing, and developmental delays. These children have also experienced multiple systemic shocks (e.g. austerity/pandemic/cost-of-living crisis), the long-term impacts of which are unknown. The UK spends billions on a system of preventative support for families, but entrenched inequalities suggest that this system is failing disadvantaged children. We have a unique opportunity to utilise Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS), an innovative interventional birth cohort designed to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple preventative interventions. BiBBS includes >5,500 ethnically diverse and deprived children and families, recruited throughout recent systemic shocks (2016-2024). BiBBS ACHIEVE will enhance this cohort with additional data collection in middle-childhood (aged 7-8) and the use of creative, innovative methodologies to: 1. Generate significant advances in understanding of the mechanisms by which these contemporary experiences impact the health, wellbeing, and educational development of socially disadvantaged children. 2. Push the boundaries of understanding of how existing interventions can be adapted and combined to effectively mitigate the impact of these exposures and reduce inequalities in child outcomes.
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