Three Yorkshire cities will be joining the Born in Bred in Research network!
BaBi (Born and Bred in) is an important research initiative which aims to find out what influences the health and wellbeing of families. Over time, this will help to shape local services, creating a healthier environment for families to enjoy.
BaBi is network of local birth cohort studies that work together to link existing data across health, education, and social care to create a picture of families’ lives over time.
This means that, with consent from pregnant women, routine data recorded by the services they access themselves or for their babies is joined together anonymously. This helps to create a bigger picture of local people’s health, for research purposes. By looking for patterns in the data, the research can give valuable insights into what works well and what can be made better, helping us to improve our services for the future.
Routine recorded data includes lots of different things, such as, blood pressure measurements from when a woman sees her midwife, or the details of baby’s height and weight recorded by health visitors.
The concept began in Bradford, where it is part of the world-leading Born in Bradford research programme. Now, in an exciting venture to help more local people in different locations, three new areas in Yorkshire have joined the study as local research sites. Doncaster, Leeds and Wakefield are all now part of the BaBi family.
Whilst each BaBi site focuses primarily on local outcomes for local people, establishing a wider BaBi network provides opportunities for important national research and learning.
Listening to parents, families and practitioners to drive the way in which local services are improved is really important, and BaBi provides the opportunity to do just that. This starts with setting the local priorities for each research site, and continues as the research progresses.
Parents, families and practitioners in each area are invited to join with researchers and medical staff in a workshop to discuss local health priorities and understand what matters most in their area. This then informs the local research priorities the study is used for.
Sally Bridges, BaBi Network Director, at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation NHS Trust said: “Connecting routinely collected data for women and their children is a hugely valuable and efficient way to help researchers answer questions that lead to real improvements in families’ health and wellbeing.
“At Born in Bradford, we have been working with families locally since 2007 to understand what helps to keep families happy and healthy. We then use what we learn to work closely with local services to make improvements that affect the health and wellbeing of our communities. We are delighted to welcome our new Yorkshire research sites to the BaBi family, so that more families and areas can enjoy the benefits this research can bring about.”