Multi-Year Study Investigates Effect of Environment and Genetics on Children's Health
The National Children’s Study (NCS) is the largest study of child health ever conducted in the United States, and it began last month in the St. Louis area. The overall goal of the NCS is to study how the environment and gene-environment interactions influence children’s health, development and quality of life. A total of 79 metropolitan areas and 26 rural communities were chosen randomly to recruit 100,000 children to represent the diversity found across the country. Locally, the following schools are partnering to assess children in St. Louis City and Jefferson County in Missouri, and Macoupin County and Johnson/Williamson/Union Counties in Illinois:
- Washington University School of Medicine
- Saint Louis University Schools of Public Health and Medicine
- Southern Illinois University Edwardsville School of Nursing
- Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
- Southern Illinois University Carbondale
- Battelle St. Louis Operations
Together, these institutions and communities form the Gateway Study Center.
In September 2010, the Gateway Study Center began recruiting pregnant women (or women who are planning on becoming pregnant in the near future) from randomly chosen segments of St. Louis City. The children will be followed from before birth until age 21 years. Interval assessments of the environment and of the children will be completed to determine the impact of the environment on child health and development. Environment is defined broadly to include physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial factors. Findings from the NCS will be made available as the research progresses, making potential benefits known to the public as soon as possible.
The Gateway Study Center has been working with a Community Advisory Board and determining the needs of local communities in preparation for this study. The majority of participants will join through door-to-door, census-type recruitment efforts. Others will join through physicians’ offices and health clinics. A local media campaign will emerge in the fall as well.
“The NCS will succeed only with the collaboration of researchers, community organizations, healthcare providers, social service agencies, and other local groups,” says Allison King, MD, MPH, co-principal investigator and hematology and oncology physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “The data gathered from this study will serve as the foundation for child health guidelines and interventions for years to come.”
Oversight of the NCS is provided by a consortium of federal partners that includes the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Funding for the NCS is appropriated annually by Congress, separate from the NIH budget, and then administered by NICHD. To learn more about the study, visit nationalchildrensstudy.gov.
