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When someone is living with two or more long-term health conditions at the same time it is known as multimorbidity or multiple long-term conditions.

Many of us will already know of someone living with multimorbidity, or even live with multiple health conditions ourselves (for example, chronic pain, depression). In fact, as we get older it becomes more and more common to live with multiple physical and mental health conditions.

People living with multiple long-term conditions often have a high risk of disability, poorer well-being and reduced quality of life. They can also have complex care needs which are difficult and expensive to treat. As a result, many countries now consider multiple long-term conditions a growing challenge for health care providers.

A common, and serious, type of multiple long-term condition is seen between disorders called internalising conditions (such as depression and anxiety) and conditions called cardiometabolic conditions (such as heart disease and diabetes).

We understand little about how and why this happens. However, we know that certain groups in society are affected more than others depending on ethnicity, socio-economic position and sex. We also know that multiple long-term conditions tend to begin before adulthood.

LINC aims to identify risk factors across the lifespan and improve our understanding of how this type of multiple long-term condition develops in different groups of people. This will help us to improve care provision and contribute to early or targeted interventions to reduce people's risk of developing it.

Running from December 2021 to November 2025, LINC is a collaboration bringing together medical and research expertise from the universities of Cardiff, Bristol, Leeds, Exeter and Queen Mary University of London, alongside the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Capital Region Denmark Psychiatric Hospital.

Supported by £3.6m of funding, LINC is one of six projects funded through the Department of Health and Social Care and UK Research and Innovation to further our knowledge of this health care priority.

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