Professor Hazel Inskip

Survey Co-ordinator

On a memorable day in July 1997, the director of our Centre came into my office and asked me if I would consider running a large survey of young women in Southampton. He presumably thought that I might manage to do it, as I had spent six years in The Gambia in West Africa working on a study of 124,000 children. There aren’t that many young women in Southampton!

The Survey then had a nine-month gestation during which we raised money, worked out how to do the study, designed the questionnaire, and recruited and trained a large team of staff. We started the Survey in April 1998 and are still going. I’m still running the Survey, with lots of help and support from many others. It’s a great project to be working on, but we owe much to the willingness of the women and children who take part and all the time and help they give us.

My time nowadays is taken up with trying to keep funds flowing to keep the Survey going, to get the data sorted out for analysis, to work out the results, and to try to get the papers published in the scientific press. We are continually planning further stages of the Survey. I am also Deputy Director of the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre so have various administrative duties associated with that, and I am also involved in a number of intervention studies that build on the findings of the SWS in which we aim to improve the health of the population.  Our particular focus is on improving health and health behaviours in young people before they become parents and also during pregnancy.

I am a medical statistician by training, with a PhD in Epidemiology. Throughout my career I have worked on a variety of issues including the effects of radiation, hepatitis B and liver cancer, asthma in children, and backpain in nurses. Many of the studies have been very large, but the SWS has resulted in the most data to sort out and analyse.

University of Southampton Profile for Emeritus Professor Hazel Inskip