FALL RIVER – Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital have been awarded a $12 million, five-year contract to expand their participation in a groundbreaking national study of children’s health to include 1,000 families in Bristol County, Mass.
The award, from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, expands the two institutions’ role in the largest long-term study of human health and development ever conducted in the United States. A year ago, they were awarded a $14.1 million contract to do the same kind of work with 1,000 families in Providence County in Rhode Island.
The recruited families’ children in both parts of the project will be followed from before birth to age 21 to identify genetic and environmental factors that contribute to health disorders and conditions of childhood and adulthood.
At a national level, the study will involve a representative sample of 100,000 infants and follow them from before birth to age 21. It is modeled after major long-term biomedical research projects such as the Women’s Health Initiative, taking advantage of observations unfolding over many years to better understand the development of certain diseases.
Researchers hope to identify the root causes of diseases such as asthma, autism, and diabetes, as well as to gain a better understanding of injuries, birth defects, and learning, behavioral and mental health disorders.
Constance A. Howes, president and CEO of Women & Infants, said the hospital “is truly honored to be part of such groundbreaking work,” which she said “has the potential to improve the overall health status of children.”
Locally, investigators will interview a random sample of more than 10,000 households each in Providence and Bristol counties. Recruitment is scheduled to begin in 2010.
A research team will visit families beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy or earlier. Some of these visits will be in participants’ homes, and some will be in clinical settings. Data also will be collected by phone, computer or mail-in questionnaires. Biological samples from the mother, father and child, as well as air, water, soil and dust from the child’s environment will be collected.
In addition, family health histories will be gathered, along with information about children’s diets, their access to parks and many other details, to determine the relationship between biological, chemical, physical and psychosocial exposures and pregnancy and birth outcomes, child development, and medical conditions. Preliminary findings from the local cohort studies will be available by 2012.
The Bristol County project will involve partnerships with Southcoast Health System’s Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River and St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford, as well as Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton and Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro. Researchers are hoping to establish satellite offices at Bristol Community College campuses to make it more convenient to meet with study participants, Brown said in a news release.
“We are most appreciative and proud of this NIH award, especially given the increasingly competitive environment for federal research funding,” said Dr. Edward Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown, in the release.
“Not only does this help advance the meaningful partnerships we have in southeastern New England between Rhode Island and Massachusetts,” Wing added, “but it also provides tangible evidence of national recognition of the excellence in public health, medicine and research of the Brown faculty and our colleagues at Women & Infants Hospital.”
For more information about the National Children’s Study, visit www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov. For more information about Brown University, go to www.brown.edu. For more information about Women & Infants Hospital, a member of the Care New England health system, go to www.womenandinfants.org.
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