A study following parents and babies living in Scotland, to understand how health in pregnancy shapes our lives. Discover the Born in Scotland research project. Find out more / Sign up General information about pregnancy research Born in Scotland is a research study that will gather information on a large number of pregnancies of people living in Scotland - and the babies born from them - during the 2020s. It will use this to answer questions about many different health issues, across pregnancy, birth, and early childhood. In the course of a pregnancy, lots of information will be shared with maternity health services - and many different tests and scans are offered in turn to parents-to-be. This helps try and make pregnancy and birth as safe as possible. The Born in Scotland project will collect and store this information securely, along with biological samples that are leftover after routine pregnancy tests. By using routinely gathered data in pregnancy - medical histories, ultrasound scans, blood tests - and creating a virtual bank of interlinked information, the Born in Scotland study will help show the environmental and genetic factors that affect a child’s long-term health and development. Born in Scotland Data Trust The 'Born in Scotland in the 2020s' study is working in partnership with the Data Trust Initiative. A data trust is a mechanism for individuals to take the data rights that are set out in law, and pool these into an organisation - a trust - in which trustees make decisions about data use on their behalf. The Born in Scotland Data Trust will develop an infrastructure for trustworthy data stewardship around the Born in Scotland in the 2020s pilot birth cohort study. Stewarding healthcare, administrative and social data collected from pregnant women and their children, this pilot project will explore how data trusts can give research participants, including young people, a voice in decisions about data use. This article was published on 2023-11-27
