Size at birth and growth in childhood are thought to be important stages of development in our lifespan and are known to be important to the risk of infant and childhood health and development problems. Over recent years these important phases of early development have also been linked to our risk of illness in later life, particularly diabetes and coronary heart disease. South Asian populations are known to be at particular risk of diabetes (2 - 4 fold higher) and coronary heart disease (50 - 80% higher) and this may be due to them having a tendency for more fat compared to lean mass. At birth, South Asian babies are generally smaller and lighter but recent studies show that like South Asian adults, they have more fat than White British individuals. This greater fatness for a given weight could be very important to the risk of diabetes and coronary heart disease but so far the reasons for it are not very clear. It is possible that being diabetic during pregnancy, which is more common in South Asian women, 'overfeeds' the infant leading to greater fatness at birth and possibly throughout life. If this is true then later generations would also overfeed their infants during pregnancy and a cycle of poor health and development could be set in motion. This continuation of risk could be made worse by the changes in environment and lifestyle experienced by South Asians who migrate to the UK such as the availability of high energy diets, a culture of less exercise and rising rates of obesity. How patterns of growth from birth to childhood differ in South Asian and White British children could also affect differences in health between these two groups in relation to childhood infections and other childhood health problems and could even affect how well children do in school. However research in this area has often used poorly designed studies with too few participants to give accurate results. Using data and information from the Born in Bradford birth cohort study I will: 1.Look at whether how much a woman weighs at the start of pregnancy, how much weight she gains during pregnancy, her glucose (sugar) levels in pregnancy and whether she develops gestational diabetes, affect how much her child weighs and how fat they are at birth and also at age 4/5 years. I will look at whether the effect of any of these measurements is different depending on whether the mother and child are of Pakistani or White British origin. 2.Describe patterns of growth and differences in adiposity and blood pressure in UK born Pakistani origin children and UK born White British children 3.Look at whether different patterns of growth in UK born Pakistani origin and UK born White British children result in different rates of childhood infection and hospital admissions between these two groups. I will also look at whether different patterns of growth affect how well the children do in school. 4.Find out whether weight and fatness at birth and in childhood is different depending on whether parents and grandparents of Pakistani infants are born in the UK or South Asia. To do this I will combine existing information from the BiB cohort with new information collected for the first time as part of this proposal. I will train and support school nurses in Bradford to collect skinfold measurements (used to estimate fatness) and blood pressure alongside the height and weight measurements recorded for all reception age children in the UK, including good coverage in Bradford. These measurements will be collected over 2 consecutive school years (2013/2014 and 2014/2015) and will involve approximately 8000 children. Cord blood samples for the whole BiB cohort will be used to compare fat mass in Pakistani and White British infants at birth (approx 9000 samples). In addition I will merge information from routine health and education systems with the existing BiB data.

Autonomous systems, such as medical systems, autonomous aerial and road vehicles, and manufacturing and agricultural robots, promise to extend and expand human capacities. But their benefits will only be harnessed if people have trust in the human processes around their design, development, and deployment. Enabling designers, engineers, developers, regulators, operators, and users to trace and allocate responsibility for the decisions, actions, failures, and outcomes of autonomous systems will be essential to this ecosystem of trust. If a self-driving car takes an action that affects you, you will want to know who is responsible for it and what are the channels for redress. If you are a doctor using an autonomous system in a clinical setting, you will want to understand the distribution of accountability between you, the healthcare organisation, and the developers of the system. Designers and engineers need clarity about what responsibilities fall on them, and when these transfer to other agents in the decision-making network. Manufacturers need to understand what they would be legally liable for. Mechanisms to achieve this transparency will not only provide all stakeholders with reassurance, they will also increase clarity, confidence, and competence amongst decision-makers. The research project is an interdisciplinary programme of work - drawing on the disciplines of engineering, law, and philosophy - that culminates in a methodology to achieve precisely that tracing and allocation of responsibility. By 'tracing responsibility' we mean the process of tracking the autonomous system's decisions or outcomes back to the decisions of designers, engineers, or operators, and understanding what led to the outcome. By 'allocating responsibility' we mean both allocating role responsibilities to different agents across the life-cycle and working out in advance who would be legally liable and morally responsible for different system decisions and outcomes once they have occurred. This methodology will facilitate responsibility-by-design and responsibility-through-lifecycle. In practice, the tracing and allocation of responsibility for the decisions and outcomes of AS is very complex. The complexity of the systems and the constant movement and unpredictability of their operational environments makes individual causal contributions difficult to distinguish. When this is combined with the fact that we delegate tasks to systems that require ethical judgement and lawful behaviour in human beings, it also gives rise to potential moral and legal responsibility gaps. The more complex and autonomous the system is, the more significant the role that assurance will play in tracing and allocating responsibility, especially in contexts that are technically and organisationally complex. The research project tackles these challenges head on. First, we clarify the fundamental concepts of responsibility, the different kinds of responsibility in play, the different agents involved, and where 'responsibility gaps' arise and how they can be addressed. Second, we build on techniques used in the technical assurance of high-risk systems to reason about responsibility in the context of uncertainty and dynamism, and therefore unpredictable socio-technical environments. Together, these strands of work provide the basis for a methodology for responsibility-by-design and responsibility-through-lifecycle that can be used in practice by a wide range of stakeholders. Assurance of responsibility will be achieved that not only identifies which agents are responsible for which outcomes and in what way throughout the lifecycle, and explains how this identification is achieved, but also establishes why this tracing and allocation of responsibility is well-justified and complete.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

The COVID19 pandemic has dramatically changed how health care is delivered. Pregnant women have been identified as a vulnerable group to COVID19 and as a consequence, women have received much of their essential health care over the phone, and partners have not been able to attend maternity appointments including baby scans. After birth the usual social support offered by friends and family has been restricted due to social distancing. For women and their partners who are having a baby during this time there is concern that this could have an impact on their physical and mental wellbeing and the health and development of their babies. The recovery from the COVID19 pandemic needs research information on the health, social and economic impacts on vulnerable populations to be made available quickly to key policy and decision makers so that they can develop and implement policies and interventions to reduce potential longer term impacts of the COVID19 pandemic. The Born in Bradford (BiB) research programme (www.borninbradford.nhs.uk) is in a unique position to be able to provide such information on a key vulnerable population: pregnant women living in a highly deprived and ethnically diverse city. BiB have two ongoing birth cohort studies: Born in Bradford's Better Start (BiBBS) focussed on women living in ethnically diverse and deprived communities and BiB4All - a routine data linkage birth cohort study aiming to recruit all pregnant women booked to give birth at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Participants give permission for follow-up via routine data from multiple agencies (e.g. GPs, maternity, health visiting, social care) and agree to be contacted for additional research projects with bespoke data collection. The aim of our study is to understand the experiences of being pregnant, giving birth and caring for a baby during the COVID19 pandemic. We will adapt the data collection within our birth cohorts to collect additional quantitative survey data and qualitative interview data at 4 time points during pregnancy and during the first year after birth. This will allow us to: a) understand how COVID19 has affected pregnant women (e.g., being identified as high risk by government, having changes to care or birth plans), and the short- and long-term impact these changes have had, for example on their expectations and experiences of care, their mental wellbeing, worries and concerns, birth outcomes; (b) understand how the crisis is affecting wider aspects of pregnancy and the transition to parenthood, for example peer-to-peer social support, support for breastfeeding and parenting, family relationships and livelihoods; (c) explore how these changes affect the partners of pregnant women during pregnancy and in the postnatal period; (d) inform practitioners, service providers and policy makers where intervention is needed to reduce the adverse effects of the health and well being of women and their babies in the short term and as part of recovery. We will combine the findings of our surveys and qualitative work and use expert groups of key stakeholders and local parents to co-produce recommendations for practice. This research will significantly contribute to understanding the impact of COVID19 on pregnant women and their partner's current and future health and the health and development of their children. It will also inform interventions to reduce the impacts of the pandemic. Bradford, like many other large UK cities, has high levels of deprivation and ethnic diversity, the findings from our study will therefore be scientifically valid and relevant to services and policy makers nationally. Our research team have connections to many other COVID19 research teams nationally and internationally as well as direct links into key national health organisations and policy makers. We will use these connections to ensure wide dissemination of our findings and ensure they are integrated in policy.

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.