Suzanne Tough

The All Our Families Cohort (formerly All our Babies) is a longitudinal pregnancy cohort that enables the investigation of the relationships between parental well-being and outcomes for children and families. This cohort also provides us with contemporary information about children growing up in an urban setting. All Our Families participants have provided information about mental health, lifestyle, neighborhood, pregnancy, parenting, child development, family life, recreation, screen time, sleep and use of services. This information will help us identify how what happens early can influence later health and development outcomes for children and families

The All Our Families cohort began in 2008 with the recruitment of 3,200 Alberta mother-baby pairs. Mothers were recruited before they were 25-weeks of gestation and were eligible if they were undergoing prenatal care for a singleton pregnancy in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Since recruitment, our dedicated participants have completed two questionnaires during pregnancy and when their children were 4 months, 1, 2, 3 and 5 years of age. We are particularly excited to have recently released our 8-year survey which has had input from teachers, parents, researchers and community organizations.  In addition to the questionnaire data, 1,800 of our mothers also provided biologic samples and cord blood.

Research areas that we have explored to date include topics related to preterm birth, social support, exposure to abuse, maternal anxiety and depression, breastfeeding, use of community resources (eg. Library), sleep, child care, and child social and emotional development. We are excited to continue to collect information to better understand how children are managing elementary school. Some topics of interest in these growing years are screen time, recreation, bullying, injury and family life.