UCL and the University of Bristol will lead the Population Research UK (PRUK) co-ordination hub, part of an existing strategic investment from the UKRI Infrastructure Fund.
The UK is a world leader in population research, bolstered by its unique collection of longitudinal population studies, which follow groups of people over time. Individually, the studies have made substantial contributions to the advancement of social and health sciences and together, they have the power to uncover the drivers behind major societal challenges and provide a potent tool for basic science application.
The collective power of the UK’s longitudinal studies was never more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies across the country coordinated to rapidly capture the epidemiological events affecting their participants, work which was then combined with a lifetime of data to shed light on how our backgrounds and lifelong health shaped our experience of the pandemic. This was just one of many examples demonstrating how important it is to make the most of population-based research in the UK.
The PRUK mission is therefore to further harness the potential of these scientific resources by supporting researchers, policymakers and study management teams to maximise benefits and overcome shared challenges.
