Welcome to the EPoCH study

The Exploring Prenatal influences On Child Health (EPoCH) study is an epidemiological research study that takes a systematic approach to explore associations between prenatal parental health behaviours and multiple child health outcomes.

The study uses data from four longitudinal cohort studies:

• The Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC)

• Born in Bradford (BiB)

• The Norwegian Mother, Father and Child study (MoBa)

• Millennium Cohort Study (MCS)

Regression analyses were performed within each cohort, and then, where possible, results were meta-analysed to produce average effect estimates across the cohorts.

EPoCH explored associations between parental health behaviours (reflecting different types and timings of exposure to parental smoking, alcohol consumption, caffeine consumption), and child health outcomes (reflecting different traits relating to body size and composition, psychosocial and cognitive factors, immunology, blood pressure, and serum biomarkers, measured at several ages).

Where possible, health behaviours from both parents are studied. Associations between parental socioeconomic position and child health outcomes are also presented for comparison.

In some cohorts, we were also able to explore associations between child health outcomes and polygenic risk scores for parental health behaviours.