ReviewBMJ paediatrics open2026
Reimagining early years services to address childhood inequities: learning from the Born in Bradford evaluation of a Better Start Bradford.
Review in BMJ paediatrics open, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
'A Better Start' was a 10-year (2015-2025), £215 million initiative funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, supporting five areas in England to address inequalities in the early years of life across socio-emotional development, language and communication, and nutrition outcomes. It aimed to provide a place-based, test-and-learn model, putting parents at the heart of design and delivery. As a result, each of the five sites developed and implemented distinct local programmes.The Better Start Bradford programme delivered multiple preventative interventions across the outcome domains. Bradford was the only site to embed a research partner, Born in Bradford, from the very beginning. This enabled the establishment of a fully resourced research hub-the Better Start Bradford Innovation Hub, which included the world's first interventional birth cohort, Born in Bradford's Better Start, designed to efficiently evaluate multiple interventions simultaneously. This evaluation has provided in-depth learning about the inequalities faced in contemporary urban populations and evidence of the implementation and impact of multiple early years interventions.In this review, we reflect on our 'decade of discovery': what worked well, what we have learnt about evaluating and delivering early years prevention at scale, and what we would do differently if we had the opportunity again. Examples of what worked well include the place-based model, the test-and-learn approach, a robust evaluation infrastructure and community empowerment. Our learning has evidenced important changes for future programmes and for commissioners, chief among them: complex inequalities cannot be resolved through the delivery of individual or scattered interventions. This collective learning points to a clear call for change to create a jointly commissioned, appropriately funded and continuously evaluated early years system, underpinned by a long-term commitment to
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.