Children's Growth during a Long-run Health Transition: Britain in International Perspective, 1850-1995

该项目将探索1850年以来英国长期健康转型期间营养、卫生和医学知识的改善如何影响儿童在身高、体重和身体质量指数方面的生长模式。研究儿童在特定年龄的生长模式（生长速度和生长曲线的形状）而不是他们的身高是一项重要的方法创新。人类发展和生长的适应性理论强调，营养不良或疾病，特别是在子宫内，不仅会影响儿童目前的身高，而且还会影响他们青春期快速生长的时间、他们的生长速度和生长周期的长度：换句话说，影响他们的生长模式。该项目将以三种方式扩展英国儿童成长的现有知识：首先，通过重建从1865年以来跨越一个半世纪的训练船记录中男孩的纵向生长测量；第二，根据历史资料制作和分析新的增长概况；第三，利用从1850年到现在从世界各地收集的生长曲线（不同年龄段儿童的平均身高和体重），将英国生长模式的变化置于国际背景下。作为该项目的一部分，将制作并存放在英国数据档案馆的四个新数据集：三个关于儿童身高和体重的个人层面数据集，以及一个关于从1850年至今世界上许多国家的增长概况的数据集。所产生的数据将提供对影响英国和国际儿童成长模式的直接因素和代际因素的长期观点，并说明从不健康的成长模式向健康的成长模式的转变是如何发生的。这些数据还将收集有关历史BMI增长曲线和儿童肥胖率的新证据，为当前的儿童肥胖危机提供历史背景。该项目的研究结果与目前关于2015年后发展框架以取代千年发展目标和了解儿童肥胖危机的讨论特别相关，并将为改善发展中国家和发达国家儿童健康的卫生干预措施和发展政策目标提供信息。我非常适合进行这项研究，因为我对历史上的儿童成长进行了广泛的研究，并了解围绕这些数据的潜在问题（Schneider， 2013年a月，2013年b月）。我在人类生长的生物学方面也积累了大量的知识，这使我能够为这个项目带来必要的跨学科方法。

This project will explore how improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medical knowledge during Britain's long-run health transition from 1850 onwards influenced children's growth pattern in terms of height, weight and BMI. Studying children's growth pattern (velocity of growth and shape of the growth curve) rather than their height at a specific age is a significant methodological innovation. Adaptive theories of human development and growth stress how exposure to poor nutrition or disease, especially in utero, does not merely affect the child's current height but also the timing of the pubertal growth spurt, their velocity of growth and the length of the growing period: in other words, their growth pattern. This project will extend existing knowledge of children's growth in Britain in three ways: first, by reconstructing boys' longitudinal growth measurements from training ship records spanning the century and a half from 1865 onwards; second, by producing and analysing new growth profiles from historical sources; and third, by placing the change in Britain's growth pattern in international context using growth profiles (the average height and weight of children across a number of ages) collected from 1850 to the present from around the world.Four new datasets will be produced and deposited in the UK Data Archive as a part of the project: three individual-level datasets with the heights and weights of children and a dataset with growth profiles for a wide range of countries around the world from 1850 to the present.The data produced will supply a longer-run perspective on the immediate and intergenerational factors influencing children's growth patterns in Britain and internationally and indicate how the shift from an unhealthy to healthy growth pattern took place. The data will also assemble new evidence on historical BMI growth curves and child obesity rates, providing historical context for the current child obesity crisis. The project's findings are particularly relevant to the current discussion about a post-2015 development framework to replace the Millennium Development Goals and to understanding the childhood obesity crisis and will inform health interventions and development policy goals for improving the health of children in both the developing and developed worlds. I am uniquely suited to carry out this research because I have conducted extensive research on historical children's growth and understand the potential problems that surround these data (Schneider, 2013a, 2013b). I have also developed substantial knowledge on the biology of human growth, allowing me to bring a necessary interdisciplinary approach to the project.