Credit: Pixel-Shot via Adobe Stock.

30 September 2025

By Elizabeth Cecil and Dushana Pinfield, Events and Communications Manager, TCRU.

As we begin our Healthier Wealthier Families in East London (HWFinEL) project, we’re sharing the research that helped shape it. We’re also now recruiting new parents in Tower Hamlets.

Bringing support to where families already are

In the UK today, 4.5 million children are growing up in poverty. At the same time, around £23 billion in welfare benefits and social tariffs goes unclaimed each year. Families are missing out on vital support that could ease day-to-day pressures, often because the system is complicated, overwhelming or hard to navigate.

In East London, the challenge is particularly stark. In some areas, nearly 40% of children live in poverty. Families raising children with disabilities, larger households, or those facing racial inequalities often carry the heaviest load. In response, we asked: could we bring welfare benefits advice directly to the places families already trust, like health clinics and children’s centres? (more…)

Several factors as far back as childhood can be connected to experiencing an early menopause. View the full infographic (Image: Centre for Longitudinal Studies).

4 March 2024

By Darina Peycheva, Alice Sullivan, Meghan Rainsberry and Ryan Bradshaw

The age a woman reaches the menopause is strongly influenced by her genes, but our research suggests that non-genetic factors can also play a role.

Menopause usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age. If menopause occurs before the age of 45, it is referred to as ‘early menopause’. Our research looks specifically at early menopause that occurs spontaneously, but menopause can also occur following certain surgeries, medications or other treatment. (more…)

Commuters walk around a London train station. Image credit: Chris Mann / Adobe Stock.

18 May 2023

By Aidan Riley

The UK is home to a remarkable set of scientific studies that have tracked generations of people growing up in Britain over the last 90 years. These longitudinal population studies are unique in science and unparalleled elsewhere in the world – no other country has anything like them on the same scale.

Over those nine decades major political, social and economic changes have impacted every area of study participants’ lives. CLOSER’s ‘Our Changing Society’ resource provides this detailed historical context through a set of interactive charts and downloadable datasets to help you understand how these changes may have impacted people’s complex lives. (more…)

Credit: Image: Monkey Business / Adobe Stock

4 May 2023

By Gurpinder Singh Lalli, University of Wolverhampton; Gary McCulloch; Heather Ellis, University of Sheffield

Mashed potato, gravy, custard. When British people hear the words “school dinners”, it’s not always great memories that come to mind.

That’s not the case for everyone. Indeed France is known for its gourmet school lunches cooked by onsite chefs – bon appétit!

But in the UK people have been complaining about school meals for a long time. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver campaigned against cheap processed foods like “turkey twizzlers” in the early 2000s. And Margaret Thatcher, the UK’s prime minister in the 1970s, was nicknamed the “milk snatcher” when she was education secretary because she stopped free milk for children in schools.

(more…)

Litter picking. Credit: lovelyday12 via Adobe Stock.

5 April 2023

By Lisa Fridkin, Neil Kaye, Katie Quy 

Much media attention is given to climate change denial and arguments over the impacts of human-driven climate change, as well as the actions of protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Meanwhile, the latest scientific reports offer a further stark warning on climate change, and call for top-down leadership to tackle the climate crisis with greater urgency. Data indicate that, in a broad sense, the British public is on board, with three-in-four Britons now saying they are worried about climate change, and many reporting they feel the UK government is failing in its duty to act. (more…)

31 January 2023

By Jake Anders 

Although young people were among those least likely to be directly affected by severe effects of COVID-19, they were not immune from its immediate effects on health. We are better able to understand the implications of this using data from the COVID Social Mobility & Opportunities study (COSMO). The study includes a representative sample of over 13,000 young people across England, who were aged 14–15 at the onset of the pandemic, and 16–17 during the academic year 2020/21 when our first data were collected.

COSMO’s purpose is also wider than the direct health impacts of COVID-19. As such, this blog post — drawing on our latest COSMO briefing published today — also takes a wider look at young people’s health behaviours during this period. (more…)