Sally Corbett

Professional activities

Health Psychologist

Areas of interest

I have been investigating the long term outcomes of slow growth in infancy. Slow weight gain in the first two years of life, or failure to thrive, has been associated with delayed cognitive development, poor educational attainment and behavioural problems. However, early work in this field only investigated samples of children who had been referred to hospital. The decision to refer children is often made on the basis of their psychosocial background and not on their rate of weight gain. For this reason hospital samples are unrepresentative of all children who fail to thrive.

I have carried out two studies of children living in Newcastle identified as failing to thrive using routinely collected weights in child health clinics. All the children who met the case criteria were studied whether they had been referred or not. In the last study all the children identified as failing to thrive in an annual birth cohort of 3418 children in Newcastle upon Tyne were followed up at age eight. These children and a control group were visited at school where their IQ and reading ability were assessed, and their mothers IQ was measured on a home visit. Further research is in progress to investigate behaviour problems and psychiatric disorders in this group.

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