We have finished the 4-year visit!

As you know, BiSC began in 2018 with the aim of evaluating the impact of exposure to air pollution and other exposures related to the urban environment (including air pollution, noise, green and blue spaces, among others, collectively known as the “urbanome”) during pregnancy and the first years of life on child development. You can find more information in the published article on the cohort profile.

However, the project has continued all these years, and the study has information not only on the first moments of the child such as fetal growth, placental function, neuroimaging data (neurosonography during pregnancy and magnetic resonance imaging during the first month of life) and a wide range of sociodemographic data, but also neuropsychological and mental health assessments have been carried out at different times up to 48 months (4 years). In fact, we have just finished this last visit of the 4 years, where we have assessed neurodevelopmental, behavioral and emotional difficulties in BiSC children, with the aim of establishing trajectories of neurodevelopment and mental disorders over time and determining their environmental and social causes. This monitoring has been possible thanks to the ENGENE project, funded by La Marató de 3Cat in the 2021 edition on Mental Health.

At 4 years old, thanks to the voluntary collaboration of all the participants, we have managed to carry out around 600 visits! The visit consisted of a face-to-face session for the children with Muriel Ferrer, the neuropsychologist of the BiSC project, who gave them a series of tests with the aim of observing psychomotor skills, short-term memory, attention span, etc. The visit was also used to collect anthropometric data from the child (weight, height, waist and hip circumference, and blood pressure), in order to evaluate their growth. In addition, we applied a series of questionnaires to collect sociodemographic information from the participants, evaluate the mental health of the parents and their conflict resolution skills, among others.

Throughout 2026 we will obtain the first results of the analysis of the data collected in this monitoring. In the meantime, we are publishing the results of the data collected in previous visits (you can see all the publications here).

We hope that the results of the BiSC project will serve to facilitate the implementation of specific prevention and intervention policies and strategies to truly protect the mental health of children, but also of the entire population. As always, it would not be possible without the help of all the families involved!

 

             

 

This news has been written by the fieldwork team from the BiSC project.