The Ipswich Study

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Tags: summer-2012

UQ's Ipswich Study is a long-term health research program

The University of Queensland’s Ipswich Study is a long-term health research program that will unravel the complexity between neighbourhoods, health and residents.

In one of Australia’s most ambitious projects of its kind, more than 10,000 Ipswich families will take part in a 10 year study that will benefit not only the Ipswich community, but also business, government and the international research community.

“It’s surprising but there’s never been a long-term study of people and the places they live. Nearly all long-term health studies look at the individual over their life but don’t look at the place where they lived and how their geographic location impacted on their health,” Professor Robert Bush, Director of the UQ Faculty of Health Sciences’ Healthy Communities Research Centre and the study’s leader said.

Across the world, more than 50 percent of people live in cities, with that figure set to rise to 70 percent in the next 40 years. Therefore, the way the modern city runs and works will have a large impact on world health. By way of example, in the 1940s and 1950s, most people in modern cities did not have cars. They moved around by foot and by bicycle, and it wasn’t until the 1970s that most households in developed nations had a car. That was the point at which researchers say they began to see the start of the current obesity epidemic.

These subtle changes in our environment impact on our health over long periods of time. That’s why it’s important to track them and monitor their effect and to start to make changes much quicker than we have. “The obesity epidemic started in the 1970s, thirty-odd years ago, yet we’re still playing catch up and struggling to deal with it,” Professor Bush said.
Ipswich was chosen as the perfect microcosm of Australian society, with a population of 160,000 people projected to grow to nearly 300,000 over the next twenty years, and a mixture of old and new and poorer and wealthier suburbs.

The study has UQ and other national and international research organisations working together to develop the different parts of information gathering and ongoing analysis, with around half of these from health and others from disciplines such as town planning, geography, Information technology and childhood development, to name a few.

Although localised, the study is designed to be internationally significant, with researchers seeking international recognition and agreement on its core ideas, questions and design, thus positioning it as a benchmark for similar global studies in the future.

“We’ve done a lot of work on how the design of cities in the last 50-60 years has had profound effects on people’s health, a lot of it in a very good way compared to the century before last where crowding led to all sorts of terrible infections,” Professor Bush said. “Now of course we have greater infection control but more long-term illnesses arising out of the way in which we have designed and constructed our cities, from poor mental health arising out of isolation to issues around metabolic fitness due to sedentary lifestyles. “These are the issues that will be important in the future,” he said.

UQ gave the study seed funding in the development phase and the rest of its funding has come from a number of small grants and the generosity of local organisations.

The study is currently working to raise a further $1.5 million to progress to its next stage.

If you would like to find out more, donate, or get involved in the Ipswich Study, go to www.theipswichstudy.com

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