Hundreds of families who are playing their part in the Born in Bradford (BiB) research will be having fun at a teddy-bears picnic to mark the project’s first anniversary.

The summer celebration will be held in Lister Park next Thursday, hosted by Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust and Bradford Hospitals Trust, with support from Pfizer Global Pharmaceuticals.

Peter Dickson, medical director of Bradford and Airedale Teaching Primary Care Trust, will also be at the event.

Hand-painting, a treasure hunt and decorating a huge birthday card are some of the sessions planned for the event, between 11am and 2pm. There will also be a disco.

Community dieticians, the Book Start team, child accident prevention officers promoting how to stay safe during the summer sun, breastfeeding advisors, the Born In Bradford project team and the fire service will all be running information stalls.

About 4,000 women and 3,000 babies have been recruited to take part in the project which started just a year ago. Members of the project team are looking forward to hitting their target of 10,000 women recruited by November 2009.

The aim of the Born in Bradford (BiB) project, which is unprecedented in its scale, is to track the health of 10,000 babies born in the centre of the city and to try to discover why some children become ill and others do not. The aim is to follow the children through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood.

Dr Pauline Raynor, programme manager for BiB, said: “We are holding this day to say thank you to all the families who have really helped to make our Born in Bradford project a success – and which will ultimately improve the health and well-being of children in the city.”

Anna Biggins, local account manager for Pfizer, said: “We are delighted to have been given the opportunity to be involved with Born in Bradford.

“It’s an innovative project which we are proud to support.”

Dr Dickson said: “Our health visitors are working hard on this project to gain measurements of the babies involved, and our information management teams also make sure the data collected is high quality.

“However, above all we are really grateful for the support given by families across the city with achieving our aim of improving health care for future generations.”

The latest challenge for the project is to recruit more fathers to take part, and there will be members of the BiB team available on the day to collect information from them, including completing a short questionnaire asking about lifestyle and health.