South Asians have a greater risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease than Europeans and we are learning more and more about how this greater risk begins in early life. Understanding the different mechanisms that all play a part in these ethnic differences will help us develop ways to treat and prevent them. This BHF grant is supporting a school-based programme of size, growth, activity and biomarker measurements involving BiB children aged between 7 and 10 attending Bradford primary schools. We have wide experience of recruiting and collecting data from BiB children in their reception year at school (age 4/5) and through this grant we will continue our successful partnership with primary schools and school nurses to collect data from year 3 BiB children. School nurse teams will collect anthropometric measurements, blood pressure and bioimpedance over 3 years (2016-2019). They will be accompanied by BiB trained researchers who will collect a blood sample and facilitate collection of accelerometer data at the same visit. We will use this information along with existing BiB data, routinely collected health data and other new data collected through parallel projects, to examine how early life differences in biological, social, cultural and economic factors contribute to differences in cardiometabolic risk between White British and South Asian children.
