About the event 

Join us at this research event to celebrate the legacy of Professor Jean Golding’s work creating and deriving insights from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), known as ‘Children of the 90s’, in Bristol more than 30 years ago. We will celebrate how her pioneering work has led to the University of Bristol becoming a leading centre in Population Health studies, and how this data inspired new methods and paved the way for cutting edge transgenerational research. 

This hybrid event will take place at We the Curious and online from 10:00-13:00 and we are delighted that Professor Louise Kenny, Executive Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool, will be given the keynote address. The event will also highlight current and future opportunities for researchers interested in working in population health, epidemiology and data science applied to health research. 

Programme 

09:30 - 10:00: Arrival and Coffee

10:00 - 10:05: Professor Dan Lawson, Director of the Jean Golding Institute for data science 

10:05 - 10:15: Professor Evelyn Welch MBE, Vice Chancellor, University of Bristol, 

10:15 - 11:00: Key note from Professor Louise Kenny CBE, Executive Pro Vice Chancellor Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool, 'Life, the Universe and Birth Cohorts '

11:00 - 11:10: Break

11:10 - 11:20: Dr Eunice Lo, Research Fellow in Climate Change and Health, University of Bristol, 'The lived experience of extreme weather events'

11:20 - 11:30: Professor Heather Whalley, Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health, The University of Edinburgh, 'Trajectory modelling of adolescent psychiatric symptoms in ALSPAC and cross-study opportunities for novel/remote data collection'

11:30 - 11:40: Dr Anya Skatova, Senior Research Fellow, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, 'Shopping trolley secrets: What can your shopping basket say about your health? '

11:40 - 11:45: Professor Nicholas Timpson, Principal Investigator, ALSPAC  

11:45 - 11:55: Professor Jean Golding OBE, 'Studying the lifecourse: where to go from here'

11:55 - 12:00: Closing remarks from Professor Dan Lawson, Director of the Jean Golding Institute   

12:00 - 13:00 Lunch and drinks 

Speakers 

Professor Louise Kenny CBE, Executive Pro Vice Chancellor Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool

Dr Eunice Lo, Research Fellow in Climate Change and Health, Cabot Institute for the Environment and Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research, University of Bristol, University of Bristol

Professor Heather Whalley, Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health and Chief Scientist for Generation Scotland, University of Edinburgh

Dr Anya Skatova, Senior Research Fellow, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol

Left to right: Louise Kenny, Eunice Lo, Heather Whalley and Anya Skatova. 

Professor Louise Kenny CBE (she/her)

Louise is the Executive Pro Vice Chancellor of the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at the University of Liverpool, deputy Chair of the Board of Liverpool Health Partners, a Non-Executive Director at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital and from April 2024, the Chair of Population and Systems Medicine (PSMB) at the Medical Research Council.

She was the founding Director of the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Irish Centre for Fetal and Neonatal Translational Research (INFANT www.infantcentre.ie) and was Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Cork University Maternity Hospital where she worked as a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist from 2006-2018.

Louise is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. She has written over 300 original scientific papers and didactic texts on the aetiology, pathogenesis, epidemiology and clinical management of this condition, supported by a portfolio of personal awards now in excess of £65 million. The work of Louise’s group has translated from the bench to clinical practice and has led to changes in guidelines both nationally and internationally. She is the founder and Principal Investigator of the Wellcome Trust funded programme Children Growing up in Liverpool (C-GULL), the first new birth cohort in the UK for two decades.

Louise has received numerous awards for her work; most recently she was elected a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 New Year Honours for services to research in the NHS.

Dr Eunice Lo (she/her)

Eunice is a climate scientist with research interests in understanding the human health impacts of extreme weather events and climate change, and their future trajectories. She utilises a range of modelling techniques in climate science as well as epidemiology and collaborate with researchers from multiple disciplines to conduct policy-relevant research. She currently co-leads a project about the lived experience of extreme weather with ALSPAC and is keen to expand this novel work.

Professor Heather Whalley (she/her)

Professor Heather Whalley graduated in Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently completed an MSc by Research and PhD in the field of neuroimaging at the Division of Psychiatry (University of Edinburgh) on brain changes over adolescence in those at familial risk of serious mental illness.

She previously held a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship and a Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh JMAS SIM fellowship. Professor Whalley's work focusses on the neurobiology of mental ill health, particularly during adolescence. Her research involves linking neuroimaging, genomic, molecular and electronic/computational phenotyping, along with youth engagement, to improve our understanding and treatment of mental ill health.

Dr Anya Skatova (she/her)

Anya is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol where she leads Digital Footprints Lab. She also holds UKRI Future Leaders and Turing Fellowships. Her work focuses on realising the value of shopping history data for population health research through linking data into longitudinal population studies. Anya studies a variety of issues, including diet, reproductive health and wellbeing.

Talks

Life, the Universe and Birth Cohorts, Professor Louise Kenny

The UK has led the world in Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) theory research for over 70 years, utilising a rich and diverse array of birth cohorts. In this keynote, we will explore the ‘origins of development origins’ and review the landmark discoveries of the last 70 years, culminating with an overview of the new kid on the cohort block- the Wellcome-funded Children Growing up in Liverpool study.

The lived experience of extreme weather events, Dr Eunice Lo

The climate is changing, and so are the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events. From 40 degrees extreme heat to damaging storms, the UK population is exposed to extreme weather that is made worse by climate change, with some people being more vulnerable than others. We also experience freezing cold weather like the 2018 ‘Beast from the East’. Currently the UK’s climate-health research and weather warnings are focused on outdoor weather measurements/predictions and population-scale health outcomes (e.g., mortality in South-West England), and we lack data on people’s lived experience, wellbeing, and behaviour during extreme weather events. In collaboration with ALSPAC, my team have deployed rapid surveys about the cohort’s lived experience during a 2023 heatwave and the 2024 cold and storm events. I will present the results we have obtained from these novel surveys and the implications they may have on developing climate adaptation strategies that suit people’s actual needs.

Trajectory modelling of adolescent psychiatric symptoms in ALSPAC and cross-study opportunities for novel/remote data collection, Professor Heather Whalley

Adolescence represents a critical period of development, characterized by significant changes in the brain and body, coinciding with the onset of mental health conditions. This talk will initially describe studies of risk factors through our own research within the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort. The talk will explore genetic risk and social/environmental influences that contribute to adverse mental health trajectories over this critical developmental window.

The second part of the talk will shift towards innovative methodologies for data collection, as demonstrated by our ongoing work within Generation Scotland. Emphasizing the potential of remote and novel approaches firmly embedded within a co-production framework, the talk will discuss a mobile-based study designed to assess loneliness among adolescents, along with new radar-based sleep monitoring methods. By integrating traditional cohort studies with innovative data collection methods these advancements not only offer new cross study opportunities for gathering large scalable high-quality data but also present opportunities for monitoring and improving adolescent mental health.

Shopping trolley secrets: What can your shopping basket say about your health?, Dr Anya Skatova

Novel sources of population data, especially administrative and medical records, as well as the digital footprints generated through interactions with online services, present a considerable opportunity for advancing health research and policymaking. An illustrative example is shopping history records that can illuminate aspects of population health by scrutinizing extensive sets of everyday choices made in the real world. In this talk I will cover my work with ALSPAC on integrating shopping history records into databanks of longitudinal population studies, as well as potential that these linked datasets bring for population health. 

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