News / Children of the 90s
Children of the 90s founder interviewed on Desert Island Discs
The founder of Bristol’s pioneering health study Children of the 90s, Professor Jean Golding OBE, will be sharing the soundtrack of her life on this week’s BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
The University of Bristol professor founded the pioneering study 30 years ago, and has since seen over 15,000 participants take part in ongoing research that has contributed to everything from heart disease and mental health to COVID-19 and ageing.
Desert Island Discs presenter Lauren Laverne described the study as a “treasure trove of data that has led to global discoveries”
is needed now More than ever
In the radio programme, Professor Golding discusses her life and career. And of course, she picks eight tracks she would choose to take with her were she to be marooned on a desert island.
She describes overcoming childhood illnesses before studying mathematics at Oxford University, eventually forging a career as a scientist and founding the longitudinal health study, Children of the 90s.
The study started when midwives in Weston, Bristol and South Gloucestershire invited all pregnant women due to give birth between April 1991 and December 1992 to take part.
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Researchers aimed to follow the newborn babies’ health and development via regular questionnaires and clinics, to understand how environment, genes and lifestyle impacted future health and development.
The majority of the pregnant women invited said ‘yes’ and in due course 14,700 babies were born and routinely contributed to a biobank of scientific research.
These babies are now adults and many of them, with their parents and children, still complete health questionnaires and visit the study to be measured and give samples.
During the interview, Professor Golding describes the early days of setting up the study, when she often got by on just three hours of sleep at night.
As a female scientist in a largely male-dominated profession, she “kept her head down and kept churning out good research to prove that a woman could do these things which didn’t just have to be the domain of men”.
Professor Golding’s interview with Lauren Laverne will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 at 9am on Friday, November 18. You can also listen to it here.
Main photo: University of Bristol
Read more:
- ‘Information from Children of the 90s saves lives and I’m so proud to say that I’m part of it’
- ‘We’re working with the city to shape the University for Bristol
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