Maternal health need in the Born in Bradford?s Better Start (BiBBS) cohort

Born in Bradford started looking at the health of mothers and children in the city in 2007 nearly twenty years ago. Since then, we have found that mothers from different backgrounds – like White European and South Asian mothers – sometimes have different health needs. It is important to study this because when mothers are healthy and happy, their children usually have a much better start in life too.

There is a newer group of mothers and children being studied, called the Born in Bradford’s Better Start cohort. These mothers live in areas where families might not have enough money or the best housing, and they have also experienced a whole range of changes in society – austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the cost-of-living crisis. These changes have also affected the health of mothers and children, and we want to look at the effects of this over the next few years. To help us start this work, we first want to find out which health problems were the most common for these mothers when they started the cohort, and how different this is to the first Born in Bradford families. We also want to see if health changes depending on a person’s family background, or what kind of neighbourhood they live in.
To find this out, we will be using reports from primary care, the information kept by local family doctors at GP surgeries. This helps us understand how health in Bradford has changed over time. By learning these facts, we can find better ways to help mothers stay healthy and give them the right support much sooner, making things better for them and their children as they grow up.