The internationally renowned Born in Bradford research programme has received a prestigious £4.5m Wellcome Discovery Award to fund an ambitious eight-year study aimed at addressing childhood health and wellbeing inequalities.
The newly funded project, BiBBS Achieve, will build on the success of Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS) birth cohort—an innovative early childhood study in the UK that has evaluated the impact of multiple early years projects delivered through the Better Start Bradford programme.
The new research will be carried out in partnership with local schools, families, and health professionals, and will involve more than 8,000 children and their families living in some of the city’s most disadvantaged areas.
The Wellcome Discovery Award is one of the most competitive and respected research awards in the world, recognising bold, collaborative science with the potential to transform our understanding of health. This major investment is a powerful endorsement of the vital work taking place in Bradford to promote health equity and improve life chances for children.
“This award is a recognition of over a decade of commitment from families, service providers and researchers in Bradford,” said Dr Josie Dickerson, Director of the BiBBS Achieve programme. “With Wellcome’s support, we can take a huge leap forward in understanding how to build a healthier, happier and fairer future for children living in inner-city areas who face the greatest disadvantages.”
The BiBBS ACHIEVE study will examine how recent systemic shocks – such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis – have impacted children’s long-term health and development. It will also explore the longer-term impact of the Better Start Bradford early-years projects on children, and how these can be adapted to create a system of effective early years interventions to improves equity in modern urban environments.
Born in Bradford’s Better Start has recruited over 5,700 families from 2016 to 2024, and this new phase will extend the research to middle childhood, working closely with inner-city primary schools. By combining large-scale data with deep qualitative insights from families, the study aims to create an evidence base that can transform national policy and practice.
This award puts Bradford at the forefront of global research into child health equity and underlines the impact of Bradford as a city of research for health and social innovation.
Further information
Born in Bradford, based within the Bradford Institute for Health Research (BIHR) at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, is an internationally recognised research programme which aims to find out what keeps families healthy and happy. We use this information to work with the local authority, health, education and voluntary sector providers across Bradford district to develop, implement and evaluate ambitious programmes to improve population health.
We have a vast ‘city of research’ infrastructure which includes detailed health and wellbeing information on Bradfordians enrolled in our three birth cohort studies and a connected routine dataset of health, social care and education data for over 700,000 citizens living in Bradford and Airedale. We host a range of initiatives to improve health working with the local authority, health, education, cultural and voluntary sector providers.
For more information, please contact Claire.watson@bthft.nhs.uk
