LHA
The MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing (LHA) is home to the
MRC National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD).
The LHA was established in 2008 under the directorship of
Professor Diana Kuh , with the
overarching aim of realising the scientific potential of the MRC
National Survey of Health and Development (NSHD) as a world class,
interdisciplinary and life course study of ageing.
The LHA will:
- Investigate age-related change in physical
and cognitive capability, that is, the capacity to undertake
physical and mental tasks of daily living.
- Investigate the body systems on which
capability depends, and the underlying biological, psychological
and social processes throughout life that drive changes in these
systems.
- Assess how ageing impacts on independence,
quality of life and survival.
- Undertake comparative and cross-cohort
research with other life course and ageing cohorts to assess
similarities and differences in ageing processes and their
determinants by time and place.
- Encourage the safe and secure use of NSHD
resources, including the genetics resource, by the scientific
community and attract a critical mass of biomedical and social
expertise.
- Develop an e-science capability that
facilitates working with shared scientific data and resources,
including inter-cohort studies.
- Enrich the MRC NSHD by collecting, with
expert collaborators, new high quality data on quantitative ageing
traits, markers of underlying biological mechanisms, social and
physical environmental exposures, and experiences of
ageing.
- Maintain and further develop the study’s
high profile among participants to ensure continued high response
rates.
- Train new life course researchers in human
ageing.
- Ensure that knowledge gained from the research is
transferred in accessible and timely ways to research users to
improve public understanding of the science of healthy ageing, and
to increase the likelihood of research findings being translated
into opportunities across life to promote healthy
ageing