The Health Across the Life Course theme includes a range of research from early life and childhood health, through to the prevention of ill health and promotion of positive health in adulthood, all the way to older adults. This aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goal number 3: Good health and well-being.
The Marmot review (2010) set out six policy objectives required to reduce health inequalities. Those most relevant to our work within this theme include Give every child the best start in life, and Strengthen the role and impact of ill health prevention.
This theme is important because there is strong evidence that childhood experiences and health are strongly associated with health later in life, and are negatively affected by parental socio-economic position (i.e., those born into poorer households are more likely to be less healthy as children and adults). Moreover, many of the key health behaviours that contribute to the development of chronic disease, such as smoking, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition, follow the social gradient. Reducing health inequalities therefore requires attention across the life course, giving children a healthy start, supporting health behaviours that will benefit health during adulthood and allow a healthier and more independent old age. This requires implementation of evidence-based interventions that relate to the social determinants of health.
CHAD projects that sit within this theme are:
Early years
- Peer Support for Antenatal Depression
- Evaluation of the Supporting a Smokefree Pregnancy Scheme read more
- The impact of COVID-19 on experiences of pregnancy read more
Adulthood
- Evaluation of the heart age test (HAT) read more
- Risk COmmunication in NHS Health Check (RICO) read more
- HEalth Check TRial (HECTR) read more
- Feasibility of digital NHS Health Check
- Physical activity and alcohol measurement
Older age
- Evaluation of the Cancer Lifestyle Project read more
- Evaluation of Thinking Active read more
- End of Life Care in Staffordshire: Health Professional Perspective read more
- Using the nominal group technique to identify the support and research priorities of older carers of people living with dementia
- Dementia friendly churches
- Living will with dementia
- Healthy Ageing in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire
Should require any further information about, details of, or access to any of our research, projects, publications or associated publications, please contact us.