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The University of Southampton
LifeLab

LifeLab's research

Southampton's pioneering research into how nutrition can improve health across the life course, and how teenagers can engage with the science underpinning health issues, is helping young people break the cycles of unhealthy behaviour.

Our medical research in Southampton has focused on the processes by which the developmental environment affects later risk of ill-health such as obesity or non-communicable disease. The insights from this research are highly relevant to today's society, because they raise issues about personal choice, responsibility for health and the need for better informed decisions about diet, lifestyle and the ethical dilemmas faced by technological societies.

Our research has identified the importance of early development prenatally and in infancy on long-term health as well as the importance of how a woman's diet and general health can impact on her child's lifelong health. Women's diets and lifestyles, however, are also influenced by their partners. Fathers play an important role in determining the diet and lifestyle of the entire family.

Further research has shown strong links between educational attainment and diet in young women. Complementing this medical research is the educational research which has explored how teenagers can engage in effective decision-making about socio-scientific issues, such as health issues, by considering relevant values and scientific concepts, and research on teenagers' understanding of infection control and the nature of genetic disease, and anthropocentric views about micro-organisms. With firm foundations in this pedagogical research, the LifeLab team in partnership with LENScience in Auckland has developed a theoretical framework for the LifeLab-LENScience approach.

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