National Survey of Health & Development

National Survey Of Health & Development

The MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing established in 2008 is the new home of the National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD).

The National Survey of Health & Development is a Medical Research Council (MRC) longitudinal survey of people born in Britain in March 1946. It is "the granddaddy of all cohort studies" and was set up by J. W. B. Douglas less than a year after the end of the second world war. It began with interviews of more than 13 000 mothers who had given birth in the United Kingdom during one week of March 1946. Originally designed to explore the impact of a National Health Service on health and to explore differences in child development by factors like social class, health and education, it has continued and has itself developed into a study of ageing. The regularly updated information about this cohort also contrasts with data from other longitudinal studies in Britain and elsewhere.

The mission of the Unit is to realise the scientific potential of the NSHD as a world class, interdisciplinary life course study by:

  • Scientific discovery of life course influences on normal and healthy ageing
  • Transfer of knowledge to policymakers, health practitioners, and other research users
  • Promotion of healthy ageing

The NSHD was formerly based at the London School of Economics (under the direction of Dr. James Douglas and at the University of Bristol), and then the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London (under the direction of Professor Michael Wadsworth). The survey now operates under the recently established MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing based in Bloomsbury, London, England, directed by Professor Diana Kuh.

Read more about National Survey Of Health & Development:  Directors

Famous quotes containing the words national, survey, health and/or development:

    All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
    Thomas Paine (1737–1809)

    By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one.... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature—for instance in a biological survey of evolution—we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer.
    Owen Barfield (b. 1898)

    It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with common sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and independence of the experience of later times. This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)