• Project Dates: From June 2006
• Project Leader: Professor Ashley Adamson
• Staff: Dr Kathryn Parkinson, Dr Laura Basterfield, Dr Wendy Wrieden, Dr Angela Jones, Jessica Reilly, Dr Xanne Janssen (University of Strathclyde)
• Sponsors: Current: Chief Scientist Office, Scotland [Previous: University of Strathclyde, NPRI, The Children's Foundation, Breathe North, The Mental Health Foundation and Gateshead PCT]

The Gateshead Millennium Study is a birth cohort of children born between June 1999 and May 2000. 1029 children born to 1011 mothers were recruited into the study which looked to find reasons for the problem of weight faltering in infancy. Since then, the study has also looked at iron deficiency, breastfeeding, weaning, food preferences, repetitive behaviours, physical activity, parenting styles and food knowledge. Up until school age we asked the parent/main carer to provide information by completing questionnaires. Since then we have visited the children at ages 7, 9, 12 and 15 years old in school and measured their physical activity, body composition and food intake, and asked them to complete questionnaires too. This has yielded data on topics such as sports club participation, eating attitudes, mental health, home environment, food knowledge and how they feel about eating. The last data sweep at age 15 focused on sedentary behaviour; this appears to have an important independent effect on cardiometabolic health and public health efforts are being made to promote breaks in sitting.  However, there is a dearth of evidence in this field, and the evidence from this study will contribute towards future interventions.

A new data sweep aims to build on this previous research by repeating earlier measures at age 17-18 years. This includes physical activity, sedentary behaviour, eating behaviour and attitudes.  Dietary intake is equally important to health.  We will continue to measure dietary intake, as well as important aspects of mental health, specifically quality of life and depression, which are associated with obesity in children and young people, and the prevalence of other lifestyle behaviours such as smoking and alcohol-drinking which can be risk factors for later physical and mental health problems. Impaired development in early life may lead to poor respiratory function and high blood pressure in later life, but as it is not known when these changes may start to occur, we will again measure lung function and blood pressure.

Please visit the Gateshead Millennium Study website for more about what we have done so far.

Publications - To view all publications, please go directly to: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/gms/dissemination/publications/

Current Collaborations

Prof John Reilly (University of Strathclyde)

Prof Charlotte Wright  (University of Glasgow)

Dr Anne Dale (Queen Elizabeth Hospital)

Dr Lorraine Brennan (University College Dublin)