Ayana Cant

Department, Institution: Department of Population, Policy and Practice, UCL

UBEL Pathway: Population and Health

Supervisor: Dr. Ruth Blackburn, Prof. Ruth Gilbert

About Me

I am a PhD student at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London (UCL). I hold a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, both from UCL. My research interests focus on the interplay between genetic and environmental influences on child health outcomes.

Before beginning my PhD, I worked as a healthcare assistant on an acute psychiatric ward and spent two years as a Research Assistant at UCL investigating child health and education outcomes using linked administrative data. I am particularly interested in how genetic and environmental factors interact, how these influences can be assessed using genomic and statistical methods, and how such insights can inform policy and practice to improve outcomes for children.

My Research

My research aims to explore how genetic and socio-environmental factors interact to shape the

developmental trajectories and life outcomes of individuals with NDDs, integrating population-level

health, education, and genomic data to identify actionable insights for early intervention and support.

Impact of My Research

Genomic data is at the forefront of scientific investment and is rapidly transforming healthcare.
However, it remains inadequately integrated with population-level health, social, and education data,
limiting its ability to deliver broader societal benefits beyond specific medical applications. The UK is
uniquely positioned to lead this integration, with lifelong electronic health records for over 65 million
people from the National Health Service (NHS), advanced genomic data from Genomics England
(GEL), and longitudinal education data for over 20 million pupils from the National Pupil Database
(NPD). Through these datasets, biomedicine and population health sciences can be combined to
identify and track – on a population scale – risk factors and longitudinal outcomes for heritable conditions
of social interest, such as neurodevelopmental disorders.