Professor Nicholas Harvey

Director; Professor of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology

Prof Harvey trained at Oxford and Cambridge Medical Schools, and underwent basic medical training in Norwich, Cambridge, Newcastle upon Tyne and Stoke on Trent, before joining the Wessex rheumatology specialist training programme in 2001. Taking time out from clinical matters, he spent three years at the MRC LEC working towards a PhD, the main focus of which has been the 4 year follow up of a cohort of SWS babies, investigating the influence of early life factors on skeletal growth in childhood. After gaining his PhD Prof Harvey completed his last year of rheumatology training as a Walport Clinical Lecturer, returning to the MRC LEC as a Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, before promotion to Senior Lecturer in 2011. He was appointed to a personal chair in 2015, and leads, with Professor Cooper and Professor Dennison, an MRC programme focused on the lifecourse epidemiology of bone and joint disease. He is working to 1) translate epidemiological observations linking early life influences on later bone health to potential novel public health strategies aimed at optimising childhood bone mineral accrual and reducing risk of later fracture; and 2) elucidate underlying mechanisms. The centrepiece of this strategy is the MAVIDOS Maternal Vitamin D Osteoporosis Study, one of the first ever human investigations of the early life origins hypothesis, and which aims to test, in a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind setting, whether babies born to women supplemented with vitamin D through pregnancy will have greater bone mass at birth, assessed by DXA, than babies born to unsupplemented mothers. He has won several Young Investigator Awards at national and international meetings, published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, and is a member of the National Osteoporosis Society (UK) Scientific Programme Committee, UK Biobank Imaging Working Group, International Osteoporosis Foundation Committee of Scientific Advisers, Bone Research Society (UK) Committee, Arthritis Research UK PRC. He serves as an associate editor for Frontiers in Bone Endocrinology and Archives of Public Health, and on the editorial board of Bone and Osteoporosis International.

Professor Janis Baird

Professor of Public Health & Epidemiology

I first became involved in the SWS in 2002 when I did some work to look at how the diet of an infant was related to their growth. I also carried out cleaning and checking of the data collected in SWS children and so became familiar with the study and the data collected over the years. Since then I have worked with the SWS team to examine the predictors of childhood sleep patterns and their relationship with behaviour at three years of age.

I have gradually become more involved with SWS over the years and am now leading our plans for the next phase of follow-up – examining the health and wellbeing of the SWS children who are now young adults aged 17 to 19 years.

I trained in medicine in Cardiff, graduating in 1987, and carried out a PhD here at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre from 1993 to 1997, working on a study of adult twins. I am currently Professor of Public Health and Epidemiology and I lead a programme of work that aims to identify behaviours that lead to a greater risk of disease in order to find ways of preventing disease and improving health. My work is particularly focused on the time before conception and during pregnancy when we know that the health of young women and men is important for them and also for their future children. The SWS forms an important part of that work as do intervention studies that aim to support people to live healthy lives.