IJPDS International Journal of Population Data Science

The Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort, published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), is the first comprehensive, nationwide database linking children’s health, education, and environmental information across England. It provides a foundation for future research into understanding how improvements to the local environment in and around children’s homes and schools can support children’s health and education.

Our surroundings, where we live, study, and play, have a huge impact on our health and wellbeing, especially for children. Studies show that children are particularly sensitive to environmental factors, like air quality, access to parks and other greenspaces, and healthy housing. These factors can affect their health, mental wellbeing, and even school grades, as children grow up.

Accurately measuring these impacts is essential to improving local environments where children live and go to school, to support their health and education. However, capturing these effects across an entire country, over time, is difficult, particularly in England, which has a very large population. The newly created Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort aims to change this.

This unique dataset will cover all children born in England since 2006, totalling around 11 million. It will help us better understand how improvements to the local environment in and around children’s homes and schools can support children’s health and education. The database will bring together children’s health information (including data on physical and mental health care use collected by hospitals and community pharmacies) and education data (such as test scores and attendance, collected by state schools), along with information about their environments, including air quality, green space access and home energy efficiency.

These environmental data will be linked to children’s home and school addresses over time using secure methods by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the national statistics agency in England and Wales. To protect privacy, all data will be de-personalised. This means that researchers will not be able to see any identifying information like names, addresses or dates of birth. Data will be held securely by the Office for National Statistics, and access will be limited to trained researchers whose research project have been reviewed and approved to ensure any findings will support children’s health and education.

With the Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort, researchers across the UK will have a powerful dataset to explore the connections between environment, health, and education of children. Lead author Selin Akaraci said, “By identifying environmental factors that impact wellbeing, this research can guide improvements in urban planning, school resources, and environmental standards that support children’s healthy development and growth. As the Cohort includes information from all children born in England, researchers will also be able to explore how diverse environmental conditions impact children across different communities.”

 

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From top left, across and down (left to right): Joana Cruz, Amal Rammah, Niloofar Shoari, Selin Akaraci, Caroline Hart, Pia Hardelid and Matthew Lilliman from Population, Policy and Practice Research and Teaching Department UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London (UCL)

*Please note, this picture captures only a subset of the wider team, and not all co-authors are shown.

Akaraci, S., Macfarlane, A., Rammah, A., Courtin, E., Lewis, E., Miller, F., Powell-Bavester, J., Mitchell, J., Cruz, J., Lilliman, M., Shoari, N., Hajna, S., Cummins, S., Adedire, T., Nafilyan, V. and Hardelid, P. (2025) “Kids’ Environment and Health Cohort: Database Protocol: supplementary appendix”, International Journal of Population Data Science, 10(1). Available at: https://ijpds.org/article/view/2475 (Accessed: 13 February 2025).