LifeLab findings support calls for more focus on parental preconception health
Research work carried out at LifeLab is helping to support calls for greater awareness of preconception health, following the publication of a series of papers in the influential medical journal The Lancet.
According to the authors of the papers there should be a renewed focus on the importance of both maternal and paternal health before a baby is conceived.
Data collected from LifeLab and presented by programme leader Dr Kathryn Woods-Townsend has been included in one of the three papers published today.
Written by Dr Mary Barker, the paper entitled Intervention strategies to improve nutrition and health behaviours before conception references data from interviews with students who had taken part in the LifeLab programme which empowers teenagers to make healthy choices based on their own scientific enquiry.
Initial findings from LifeLab found that 75 per cent of the first 1,000 students participating in the programme wanted to change their health behaviour as a result and at the end of the progamme 50 per cent had made a pledge to improve diet while 40 per cent said they would pledge to do more physical activity.
Collectively, the papers set out how parental health and diets can have profound implications for the growth, development and long-term health of their children, and that this approach should be considered at a public health level by addressing preconception risk factors, such as diet and obesity, months or even years before pregnancy.
Speaking on her paper Dr Mary Barker “It is everyone’s responsibility to support our young adults in becoming successful parents of healthy, long-lived children. We have the infrastructure to do this in our existing health and education platforms and a global food system, but must now prioritise improving preconception health.”
The papers draw on research that suggests that smoking, high alcohol and caffeine intake, diet, obesity and malnutrition potentially cause genetic, cellular, metabolic and physiological changes during the development of the unborn baby, which have lasting consequences into adulthood and increase the child’s lifelong risk of cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and neurological diseases.
The authors also note that there could be more risk factors associated that have not yet been identified.
Professor Keith Godfrey, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and University of Southampton explains: “Better understanding of the underlying mechanisms – including epigenetic, cellular, metabolic, or physiological effects – and the exposures that drive them, will be important and help define preconception health recommendations in the future.”
The authors of the papers recommend interventions that span the life course and the need for greater support for people to change.
Starting in adolescence, the authors propose that schools need to help young adults prepare for parenthood in the future. Support for improving nutrition before conception needs to be offered in ways that engage adolescents in thinking about their diets and health, and the implications of this in later life, in pregnancy, and for future generations.
That approach is what the LifeLab progamme is built upon with students encouraged to think about how the choices they make in adolescence can impact their future health and that of their children.
The LifeLab team, part of the University of Southampton’s Faculty of Medicine and Education School, works with teachers to deliver a series of lessons in-school, before pupils visit the state-of-the-art teaching space at the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre at University Hospital Southampton.
The day is spent conducting a series of experiences that can measure their own health and through their investigation they can discover how choices around diet and lifestyle can impact their wellbeing in the future.
Read more on the three-paper series on preconception health on the Lancet website.
This article was originally posted on the LifeLab Blog.