Sarah Brown, the wife of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has spoken about the profound impact of losing her daughter Jennifer, who was born prematurely and died in 2002.
The experience, she says, was her "greatest loss" but fuelled her determination to find answers and improve outcomes for other families.
Jennifer was born seven weeks premature in January 2002, at just 33 weeks, and died 10 days later.
Driven by their grief and a desire to prevent similar tragedies, the Browns established the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh in 2004.
The laboratory focuses on understanding the causes of early labour and developing effective treatments to prevent it.
“For Gordon and I, losing Jennifer was the greatest loss and it’s one that stays with us,” Mrs Brown told BBC Scotland.
“That doesn’t change.
“What I realised was that there was more we needed to understand, that I didn’t have answers for what had happened and so many other families didn’t either.”
The laboratory has been drawing on data from the Edinburgh Birth Cohort research programme which was launched at the facility in 2015.
The study is tracking the development of 400 people as they grow into adulthood and aims to provide insights into the long-term effects of early labour on the developing brain.
Mrs Brown, chairwoman of the Theirworld children’s charity which she founded in 2002, said the study has shown the “stark realities” of the impact of poverty, which researchers have found has an impact on brain development.
She hopes the research will help other families in the future.
Mrs Brown told the broadcaster: “I would go back to the beginning and have it all change and not end the way it did for me, but I know that what it’s done has opened up other horizons.
“I would love to think that other families can avoid that loss, or if they have a baby that’s born prematurely and more vulnerable, or coming out of circumstances that are much more precarious, that there’ll be a better way to track that future and to open it up and to be able to be much more predictive about what we can do.”
