Prof Kelly leads work on health and development during childhood and adolescence. Of particular interest are: 

•  the causes and consequences of social and ethnic inequalities
• the ways in which familial and broader social contextual influences combine to shape health and development
• the uptake and retention of health related behaviours during late childhood and adolescence
• the links between early life exposures e.g. drinking and smoking in pregnancy, birthweight and infant feeding and later health and development.

To do this work she makes use of longitudinal datasets including the Millennium Cohort Study, the UK Household Longitudinal Study, the 1958 and 1970 Birth Cohort Studies.