Developmental Origins of Health and Disease: Towards a combined bio-social life-course perspective.

Abstract

The life-course concept has been widely used during the 20th century to give insights into biomedical as well as wider social issues. However, the biomedical and social science fields have developed concepts in parallel without much cross-fertilisation. For the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) biomedical scientific discourse, the focus has largely been on pro- and retrospective epidemiological cohort studies of risk of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and of underlying mechanisms such as epigenetic processes. In parallel, numerous long-term studies within the social sciences have provided strong evidence on how generations interact and the changing social relations and family structures over the past century. This article explores how the life-course concepts from these fields can be combined, arguing for a re-invention of a social medicine approach to family health in communities based on a long-term, diachronic perspective.