SCPHRP’s Director, Prof John Frank, was recently privileged to co-host the 70th Birthday Celebration of the 1946 British Cohort, in London and Manchester, attended by more than 700 surviving members of this — the oldest cohort of human beings ever followed continuously by researchers since their birth. That study – now referred to as the National Survey of Health and Development — is now housed an MRC-funded University Unit based at UCL, and directed by Prof Diana Kuh. Prof Frank as been the Chair of the study’s international Steering Committee since 2009.
The celebrations included a half-day of presentations by the study’s current research team of recent findings, focusing on new evidence about the decades-long pre-clinical phase of the commonest disabling conditions in later life: dementia, osteoporosis, stroke and heart disease, and many cancers. In the afternoon sessions, a previous study director, Prof Michael Wadsworth and a dozen study members — all lay persons — presented their own reminiscences of the study’s history. These included some very humorous anecdotes, some based on the extraordinary fact that all 5,000 original members of the study were all born in the same week in March 1946 — ergo the common birthday celebration!
Read more about the NSHD here..
and the 70 Birthday Celebrations here..
