University of Glasgow

Academic Institute

OFHS240172

This study aims to describe the Our Future health cohort, and its subgroup (e.g. age group, sex, gender), on people’s demographic, social and economic characteristics (e.g. income, education), their lifestyle (e.g. smoking), and presence of diseases. We will also compare them with data from Health Surveys for England (2016-2019, 2021). Research studies often recruit people who are of higher income and/or education. However, it is important that research studies’ participants to be able to represent all people in the UK, not only those who have higher income and/or education. This is to ensure that findings from the research studies to be as accurate as possible. One of the potential advantages of the Our Future Health study, comparing to existing large databanks, such as UK Biobank, is that it could represent the UK population better. This study will look at the characteristics (e.g. age, sex, gender, education, income, lifestyle, health) of participants in Our Future Health. They will be compared with national health surveys to provide information on whether, and to what extent, the Our Future Health study could represent the whole of UK. This study will also look at established how health varied by age, sex, education, income, lifestyle within the Our Future Health study, and compare that with other cohorts to examine consistency. This information will be useful for all future epidemiological work using Our Future Health in interpreting the data correctly.

Ensuring the accuracy of findings from research studies are important to safeguard against erroneous findings which could waste valuable resources or even do harm to the population. This study will provide new information as to what extent the findings generated from Our Future Health are consistent with existing databases. This provide an extra layer of safety that new findings from Our Future Health are reliable and can be applied to the UK population. This ensures the public could benefited from other new research findings generated the Our Future Health study. Upon completing the study, we will work with the public via the Byres Community Hub in Glasgow as a group meeting to discuss and disseminate the findings. The public will be consulted on what they think in terms of the representativeness of the Our Future Health data, given the findings, as well as how we communicate the findings with them.

Public Health Research

28/07/2025

19/06/2025

TRE