The researchers helped visitors to understand how looking at health data from big populations can help researchers see patterns with health and things like lifestyle, genetics and environmental exposures so they can make recommendations to help improve prevention, detection and treatment of health conditions.
"I enjoyed the mixture of doing activities with the children/ families and talking about epidemiology with the adults."
Central to the team's stall was a huge age/height graph made of a net stretched across a wooden frame. People found their age along the bottom and then stood next to the graph to mark their height by tying shapes with coloured wool. The shapes represented gender and the different coloured wool reflected whether their parents were tall, average or short. Over time, visitors were fascinated to see height patterns emerge depending on age, genetics and gender. This provided a great springboard to discuss the trends and how epidemiologists see health patterns in populations.
Visitors also had the opportunity to comment on and guide the direction of real health research projects going on at the University of Bristol.
"It was cool to talk about what I was researching and the kind of work we do at Bristol."
