European birth cohorts offer insights on environmental factors affecting human development and health

European countries, particularly the UK, have a long history of conducting birth cohort studies. Now a new birth cohort, the UK’s Life Study, has ambitious plans to enroll tens of thousands of participants and a hope that it will succeed where its counterpart in the USA, the National Children’s Study (NCS) has failed.1 The NCS was dissolved in December 2014 by the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) amid concerns over the study’s feasibility and costs.2,3 Although the NIH remains committed to the overarching goals of the NCS,2 to ‘find alternative ways to study child development and environmental influences on health’,4 it is unclear when and how this is likely to happen. However, ready options to address the goals of NCS are available among the European birth cohorts5,6 and are likely to have international relevance beyond Europe.