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Background: why is it important?Maternal physical, psychological and social risk factors extend beyond affecting mothers' individual wellbeing to significantly influence their children.Research consistently shows that maternal exposure to poor nutrition and psychological and social stressors prior to and during pregnancy is associated with an increased risk of adverse birth outcomes, developmental disorders and chronic health conditions of children in both childhood and later life. 1345678910 These maternal exposures may even date back to the mother's childhood. 8 Recognizing the intricate interplay of these factors within families and across generations is pivotal for designing targeted interventions to enhance the health and wellbeing of current and future generations.Longitudinal mother-baby cohort studies are useful in addressing research questions about the influence of maternal exposures on outcomes in their child.There are generally two types of mother-baby cohorts: recruited and consented cohorts, and administrative data-derived cohorts.A key advantage of recruited and consented cohorts is the capture of assessment data from mothers and their children throughout various stages of pregnancy and beyond.In the past decades, many such cohorts have been established. 11Examples in England include Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children study, 12 1970 British Cohort Study, 13 Born in Bradford cohort, 14 Southampton Women's Survey 15 and the Gateshead Millennium Study. 16Some of these cohorts are linked to administrative data for follow up. 12,17These cohorts collect data on maternal exposures during pregnancy, but often have limited data on maternal exposures prior to pregnancy, such as the mother's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.Furthermore, these cohorts can be constrained by relatively small sample sizes, limited follow-up periods or geographical restrictions. 11y contrast, administrative data-derived cohorts have distinct advantages, including comprehensive coverage, being less prone to the selection biases, the ability to examine cohorts from past decades and, very recently, the power to examine rare conditions.Several countries have derived national longitudinal administrative cohorts. 18,19e derived a national mother-baby cohort nested within the Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data (ECHILD) Database. 20,21ECHILD is a linked collection of the National Health Services (NHS) Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) and the Department for Education (DfE) National Pupil Database (NPD) for a population-based cohort of children and young people born in England.In this Key Features� The Education and Child Health Insights from Linked Data Mother-Baby (ECHILD-MB) cohort was created by linking data from National Health Service (NHS) Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) with the National Pupil Database (NPD), to examine intergenerational effects of maternal exposures on child outcomes in education, health and social care in England.� We extracted 14.5 million baby records from HES for births between 1 April 1997 and 31 January 2022 and, using a validated motherbaby data linkage algorithm, linked 13.6 million (94.1%) of these to the delivery records of 8.0 million mothers.� The linked cohort captures 87.3% of all births and 87.7% of all live births in England, and as of 2023, includes mothers aged 12-37 and their children aged 0-24 years.The cohort is representative of national birth statistics.� All individuals in the cohort are linked to HES and the NPD, which include routinely collected data on sociodemographics, education, health and use of children's social care.
Feng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.