The UK is launching its first nationwide birth cohort in a generation, tracking thousands of infants born in the mid-2020s from infancy through early childhood. This matters because the last such study began before smartphones, social media, and the pandemic reshaped family life. Policymakers and researchers lack up-to-date data on how today’s social, technological, and environmental changes affect children’s development, health, and life chances. The study deliberately recruits families from disadvantaged areas, devolved nations, and minoritised ethnic groups—groups often missed in past research—so the findings reflect the whole population, not just the most reachable. If successful, the data will inform decisions on early-years policy, health visiting, childcare, and family support. It will also feed into education and social care systems, helping target resources where they are most needed. By linking to health and education records, the study can reveal long-term patterns without burdening families. The result is a resource for scientists, practitioners, and government—quietly shaping the infrastructure of childhood policy for decades to come.
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The Early Life Cohort (ELC) will collect rich, longitudinal data on a 30,000-strong cohort of infants born across the UK in the mid-2020s. The ELC will be the first nationwide birth cohort in a quarter of a century, providing urgently needed data for science, practice and policy on a new generation of children and families. The study will paint a nationally representative picture of the early environments shaping the developmental, social, and health trajectories of children in a period of unprecedented social, technological, and environmental change. Using a stratified sampling strategy based on birth records, boosted recruitment in devolved UK nations, disadvantaged areas and for minoritised ethnic groups, and an inclusive approach to cohort engagement, the ELC will ensure that traditionally under-represented and 'seldom-heard' populations are well represented from the outset and retained in sufficient numbers over time. Ongoing input from the public, expert advisory groups and regular open consultations will ensure the continuing relevance and timeliness of the ELC's data collection strategy over its lifetime. In this first phase of the study, infants and their families will be recruited from across the UK. It will include face-to-face data collection at 9-10 months and 3 years of age. These intensive sweeps will collect high-quality behavioural, cognitive, and health assessments, alongside biological samples and key contextual data. Between these two waves, families will be invited to complete questionnaires on a bespoke smartphone app, enabling low-burden data collection at higher frequency and on a wider range of topics than is possible from the two major waves. Record linkage will also substantially enhance the analytical scope of the data collected, incorporating information from parent and child education, health and social care records, including retrospectively from pregnancy and early infancy, providing additional indicators of outcomes, contextual stressors and vulnerabilities. Together, the approach we propose combines inclusivity, positive cohort engagement, measurement depth and breadth alongside scale and cost-efficiency. To deliver this, Co-Directors Professors Goodman, Calderwood and Fearon, lead a scientific and delivery leadership team (SDLT) with senior collaborators from universities in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and the Fatherhood Institute and a wider project team. Together with specific expertise from National Children's Bureau, the Anna Freud Centre, the Institute for Health Visiting and Bryson-Purdon Social Research, we collectively offer unrivalled scientific and operational expertise alongside exceptional policy and societal reach, to deliver the objectives of the project. A robust management and governance structure, with ESRC and study advisory groups, as well as wider open consultations, provides assurance on both delivery and scientific quality.
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