To evaluate the impact of the Healthy Start voucher scheme and Universal Infant Free School Meals programme on the diet of low-income infants.

The aim of this project is to explore how the school policy, social and physical environment may be harnessed to increase physical activity and improve the weight status of adolescents.

This project aims to explore ways of measuring the movement-related behaviours of preschool-aged children to aid the development and evaluation of a measurement tool to assess the movement-related behaviours of pre-school aged children.

The aim of the project is to review the current portion size guidance, to explore whether 1-5-year olds meet the portion size recommendations and to understand how parents make decision about portion sizes for their young children.

Under the Universal Infant Free School Meals Policy, all children at state funded primary schools in reception, year 1 and 2 were offered a free lunch. This project will explore if this policy can be linked to improved nutrition, and an increase or decrease in the number of children who are underweight or overweight.

Children in the UK have poor health compared to other Western European countries, and there are large and increasing inequalities in child health, including for mental health and obesity. Over the last 20 years numerous reviews of evidence and policy have repeatedly emphasised the need to provide better support early in children’s lives if we are to have any chance of significantly reducing the inequalities in life chances experienced by people in the UK. To address these challenges, we propose a programme of work with a focus on harnessing data to evaluate systems-based approaches for improving children and young people’s outcomes.

We aim to inform policy and practice to improve child health and reduce inequalities in England by developing a research programme to address two research areas, co-produced with the other programmes and cross-cutting themes.