Cohort Profile: The Mater-University of Queensland Study of Pregnancy (MUSP)

At the initiative of three hospital-based obstetricians one of the authors (Najman) and another sociologist attended a 1978 meeting to explore the potential for collaborative research. No specific project was proposed by the obstetricians. Two of the obstetricians had been trained in Scotland; one in Aberdeen where he had had some familiarity with the work of obstetrician Dugald Baird and sociologist Raymond Illsley. The obstetricians argued for an agenda that was clinically oriented. The two sociologists were more focussed on understanding how some social constructs (e.g. social class) might be relevant to explaining health outcomes. The initial year of the study was characterised by frequent (at least weekly) meetings at which the aims and substance of the proposed study were debated vigorously. As an initial decision the team focused on factors associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes. The first major project was to be a 3–5 years longitudinal study of pregnant women, which would include a 6-month child post-natal follow-up as the main outcome of interest.