Gerontology

Linguistics

Demography

Philosophy

Danish

Social psychology

Cohort

Surgery

Cohort study

Psychiatry

Socioeconomic status

Developmental psychology

Environmental health

Disadvantage

Pediatrics

Psychology

Political science

Population

Family medicine

Internal medicine

Sociology

Psychosocial

Prospective cohort study

Epidemiology

Life course approach

Medicine

Sibling

National Child Development Study

Pathology

BMJ Open

The DANish LIFE course (DANLIFE) cohort is a prospective register-based study set up to investigate the complex life course mechanisms linking childhood adversities to health and well-being in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood including cumulative and synergistic actions and potentially sensitive periods in relation to health outcomes.All children born in Denmark in 1980 or thereafter have successively been included in the cohort totalling more than 2.2 million children. To date, the study population has been followed annually in the nationwide Danish registers for an average of 16.8 years with full data coverage in the entire follow-up period. The information is currently updated until 2015.DANLIFE provides information on a wide range of family-related childhood adversities (eg, parental separation, death of a parent or sibling, economic disadvantage) with important psychosocial implications for health and well-being in childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. Measurement of covariates indicating demographic (eg, age, sex), social (eg, parental education) and health-related factors (eg, birth weight) has also been included from the nationwide registers. In this cohort profile, we provide an overview of the childhood adversities and covariates included in DANLIFE. We also demonstrate that there is a clear social gradient in the exposure to childhood adversities confirming clustering of adverse experiences within individuals.DANLIFE provides a valuable platform for research into early life adversity and opens unique possibilities for testing new research ideas on how childhood adversities affect health across the life course.

Cohort profile: the DANish LIFE course (DANLIFE) cohort, a prospective register-based cohort of all children born in Denmark since 1980