COVID-19

Perspectives blogs

This is the first in a 3-part blog series by CLOSER Partner Study, Understanding Society, exploring their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Michaela Benzeval (Director), Dr Jon Burton (Associate Director, Surveys) and Professor Peter Lynn (Associate Director, Survey Methods) take a look at how Understanding Society – the UK’s biggest household panel survey – […]

As we enter a new year and a new national lockdown, it is clear that the continuing coronavirus pandemic, the restrictions imposed to prevent its spread and the knock-on social and economic impacts will clearly have far reaching consequences on peoples’ lives for years to come. Having worked in the field of life course epidemiology […]

In our final COVID-19: Perspectives blog series this year, Professor Elaine Dennison, Deputy Director of the Hertfordshire Cohort Study, takes a look at the lockdown experiences of the participants of the study, all born in Hertfordshire during 1931-9. I am writing this shortly after the announcement that several vaccines are showing promise in the fight against […]

The uncertainty around COVID-19, the asymptomatic transmission and the immediate and long-term health consequences have highlighted the responsibility that longitudinal studies have to ensure the safety and wellbeing of their study participants. Like many others, the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL took the decision to halt face-to-face data collections for two […]

Professor Alissa Goodman, Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), discusses how CLS rapidly responded to the UK’s lockdown by launching a special COVID-19 survey to capture time-critical experiences of the pandemic, and looks at the first analyses of data. The spread of COVID-19 across the UK, together with the drastic economic and social […]