BiBBS ACHIEVE: Addressing Childhood Inequalities through Evidence-Based Early Interventions using Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS) birth cohort

Our vision is to conduct discovery research to better understand how to effectively intervene to create a healthier, happier, and fairer future for socially disadvantaged children. Socially disadvantaged children in high income countries experience poorer health, wellbeing, and developmental delays. These children have also experienced multiple systemic shocks (e.g. austerity/pandemic/cost-of-living crisis), the long-term impacts of which are unknown. The UK spends billions on a system of preventative support for families, but entrenched inequalities suggest that this system is failing disadvantaged children. We have a unique opportunity to utilise Born in Bradford’s Better Start (BiBBS), an innovative interventional birth cohort designed to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple preventative interventions. BiBBS includes >5,500 ethnically diverse and deprived children and families, recruited throughout recent systemic shocks (2016-2024). BiBBS ACHIEVE will enhance this cohort with additional data collection in middle-childhood (aged 7-8) and the use of creative, innovative methodologies to: 1. Generate significant advances in understanding of the mechanisms by which these contemporary experiences impact the health, wellbeing, and educational development of socially disadvantaged children. 2. Push the boundaries of understanding of how existing interventions can be adapted and combined to effectively mitigate the impact of these exposures and reduce inequalities in child outcomes.