Aim 1: To study the life course epidemiology of female reproductive health and potential in early adulthood. I will use data on foetal exposures, growth, adiposity, diet, physical activity, smoking and stressful life events assessed repeatedly throughout childhood, adolescence and early adulthood to estimate the contribution of these and to identify critical and/or sensitive periods to female reproductive health and potential.

Common pregnancy complications (gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders, preterm delivery, large- and small-for-gestational-age babies) affect some 30% of pregnant women. It is not known if these complications simply unmask an underlying propensity for cardiovascular disease (CVD), or contribute to it.

Aim 2:To investigate the role of pregnancy complications in shaping cardiovascular risk. If pregnancy complications per se increase CVD risk, causal mechanisms should be identified as these may provide treatment targets in women who experienced pregnancy complications to mitigate these effects. Even if the pregnancy complications only unmask women at increased risk of CVD, greater post-natal monitoring to identify if and when women cross established treatment thresholds is likely to be warranted.

Research into the female reproductive health and chronic disease has generally focussed on a single indicator of female reproductive health, whilst it is likely that information on multiple indicators such as menstrual cycle length and pregnancy complications; behaviours such as hormonal contraception use; and gynaecological disorders and their treatment can better characterise women's reproductive health and improve understanding of both its causes and consequences. Moreover, it is still unclear whether associations between indicators of reproductive health and chronic diseases are causal and if so via what causal pathways, or whether both female reproductive health and chronic disease are driven by common antecedents.

Aim 3: To study the relationship between female reproductive health and chronic disease. I will study the separate and joint associations of multiple indicators of female reproductive health with major disease outcomes (breast cancer, CVD, diabetes, osteoporotic fractures, depression, dementia, lung disease) and examine whether associations are independent of established disease specific risk factors.

Regardless of whether indicators of reproductive health are causally related to chronic disease outcomes, it is possible that readily available information on indicators of female reproductive health can improve risk stratification in women.

Aim 4:To determine whether information on female reproductive health can improve the performance of existing risk scores for the prediction of diabetes, CVD, osteoporotic fractures and dementia, or simplify them without loss of accuracy.