About Us

In the 1930s there were worries about the falling birth rate, and concern that the cost of having children was so great that people were deterred from parenthood. A study was designed to look into this by investigating the cost of childbirth and the working of medical and nursing services (pre-NHS). The study all the births which occurred in England, Wales and Scotland during one week in March 1946. It was so successful, that a selection of those individuals are still being studies to date.

Summary of Data Collected

History

Find out about the history of the National Survey of Health and Development

History of the NSHD

Current Studies

Learn more about the studies we are conducting

Current Studies

Data Sharing

The NSHD has a data archive with over 20,000 variables collected over the lifetime of the study

Data Sharing

Neuroimaging clinical study

brain scan

The neuroimaging clinical study (also called Insight 46) is a clinical study with the specific aims of identifying brain changes that accompany healthy ageing and detecting brain changes that might help predict who is at greater risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Neuroimaging 46

MyoFit 46

The human heart’s potential to regenerate itself is lost after childhood so the state of the heart by the time we’ve reached adolescence is a key determinant of our future cardiovascular wellbeing. We are looking for ways to maintain heart health (also known as myocardial fitness, hence the project title MyoFit46).

MyoFit 46