University of Southhampton
Caroline Fall studied medicine at the University of Bristol, followed by clinical training in General Medicine, General Practice and Paediatrics. She joined the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit in 1989, to study the Hertfordshire cohort, and showed that low birthweight and infant weight were associated with an increased risk of insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes in adult life. Since 1993, she has been working on the fetal origins of diabetes mainly in Indian populations, building up collaborations in several centres in India.
Caroline Fall works with a team of epidemiologists and statisticians investigating the fetal origins of cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes and the maternal factors influencing fetal growth. Her chief role is to co-ordinate a programme of research involving 5 centres in India. These studies include the follow-up of children and adults whose size at birth was recorded, and more recently, prospective studies on the short and long-term effects on the offspring of maternal nutritional status and glucose/insulin metabolism. She was the moving force and organising secretary for the First World Congress on the Fetal Origins of Adult Disease held in Mumbai, India, February 2001, and a member of the scientific planning committees for the Third and Sixth World Congresses, held in Toronto (November 2005) and Santaigo, Chile (November 2009). She is secretary of the International Society for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD)and Associate Editor of the newly launched Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease.