A new study that will follow 100,000 children across the United States kicked off in Southern California this week. So far, the researchers have recruited 12 women. According to study’s supervisors, San Diego’s participation will be critical to the national study due to its diverse racial and ethnic heritage, as well as its large military population and proximity to the U.S. Mexican border.
The National Children’s Study will be one of the most comprehensive research efforts, and the largest and most detailed study in history focused on children’s health and development in the United States.
Run locally by researchers from the UC San Diego’s School of Medicine and San Diego State University, the study is targeting women ages 18 to 49 who are pregnant or may become pregnant in the next few years. Starting before birth, the study will follow children from birth to age 21, hoping to gain new understanding of how environmental factors and other aspects of daily life might impact health and development.
Data from the Study may inform research into many conditions such as, but not limited to, birth defects and pregnancy-related problems; injuries; asthma; obesity; diabetes; and behavior, learning, and mental health disorders. Findings from the Study will benefit all Americans by providing researchers, health care providers, and public health officials with information from which to develop prevention strategies and health and safety guidelines, as well as to guide future research.
Researchers will analyze how environmental factors interact with each other and what helpful and/or harmful effects they might have on the health of children and ultimately adults. The Study analysis will focus on the differences that exist between various groups of people across the country, in terms of their health care access, disease occurrence, and other issues, so that these differences or disparities can be addressed.
There are two related phases of the National Children’s Study: the Vanguard Study and the Main Study. The Vanguard Study will evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and cost of three different recruitment strategies, as well as Study procedures and outcome assessments that are to be used in the Main Study. The Main Study will focus on exposure outcome relationships with a data driven, evidence-based approach.
Jennifer Zellner, Ph.D., the study’s coordinator comments:
“We want to learn about how a child’s environment affects his or her health, and hope to learn about the factors that contribute to disease and illness as well as healthy, normal development. We will eventually reach out to 14 neighborhoods in San Diego, and are currently actively recruiting in three neighborhoods: National City, Escondido, and North Park.”
Hundreds of scientists and representatives from community groups and professional organizations have contributed to the identification of key children’s environmental health questions for the Study.
The Study Design Working Group of the National Children’s Study Federal Advisory Committee (NCSAC) proposed the development of core hypotheses encompassing exposures and child health outcomes of great public health significance requiring long-term follow-up and which cannot be reasonably studied with fewer children or a different study design. These hypotheses are important to guide and support the determination of sample size and design for the Study and are essential to assure that specific research questions can be addressed by the Study.
The set of research questions and their corresponding hypotheses garnered from this exercise forms the foundation of the Study and together provides a rationale for a long-term, prospective study of the approximately 100,000 children, the scientific framework to define the Study, including sample design, data collection and a “public identity” for the Study.
Source: The National Children’s Health Study
Written by Sy Kraft, B.A.