As a member of the Leicestershire cohorts, you are taking part in one of the most important long-term health research projects ever undertaken. Over 10,000 children are taking part and the study has followed their health and development over many years.

You can be justly proud of participating in this famous research.

Please tell us if you move – Update your contact address

We'd be very grateful if you could give us your new address if you move.

• Maybe your whole family is moving home.
• Or maybe you're one of the young people in the study and you're moving away to start work or college.

Please send an email to Dr. Caroline Bearsdmore (csb@leicester.ac.uk).

Am I part of the cohorts?

If you are on our list of special children born in Leicester! We have been sending questionnaires to parents for a long time building up a background about their breathing & lungs.

How can I take part?

If you or a member of your family belongs to the Leicestershire cohort group, you will receive postal questionnaires every few years. We may invite you to come along for breathing measurements where you can do some tests and learn a lot about your health in a friendly environment.

Your answers to the questions and your results in laboratory studies will really help us to a better understanding of breathing problems in children and their effects as they grow up. If you & your family have already responded to our mailings in the past, we would like to thank you for your help and are really looking forward to hearing from you again! But if you haven’t been taking part in the questionnaires, there is still a chance to take part & the information you provide will help us to understand breathing problems for all children.

How do they use my results?

We use the results to answer many questions about healthy lungs & breathing problems in children.

To do this we have a team of scientists from the University of Leicester, University of Nottingham & Switzerland. These include:

• Nurses & technicians who first have to collect the results from you during your school & lab visits, together with reading your questionnaires.
• Doctors, who take care of children to help us to find out why some children have breathing problems and others, do not.
• Computer whizz’s who store, manage & check all the results help to find reasons why some children’s lungs grow healthier than others. These guys only deal with numbers.
• We share the results of our research with other scientists & doctors, so that they can use our findings to improve the health of children and adults. The results are shown at meetings, printed Science books and used in special magazines for doctors & Scientists.

How do they protect my data?

The questionnaires are treated in the strictest confidence. This means that only the answers to the questions are entered into a computer giving each child a special number (but no names or addresses). No individual results from these questionnaires are given to other people (not even to any doctors or to hospitals unless you ask us to). Only the overall findings of the study in terms of groups of children are shared, for example, girls vs. boys.

The Leicestershire and Rutland Ethics Committee approved the study, because it improves child health, is carried out carefully, and confidentiality is guaranteed.