Children's Memorial Hospital physician heads nationwide kids' health study
CHICAGO --- What are the most critical health problems of children in the
Chicago area, and how can these problems best be prevented or treated?
Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine will help answer these
important questions with the launch of an historic federally-funded study that
will follow 4,000 children in Cook County from before birth to age 21.
The Feinberg School has received a seven-year, $32 million contract from the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to be the Chicago study
center of the National Children's Study, the largest study of child and human
health ever conducted in the United States.
"By better understanding the health of children in our
community, we can better understand how to improve their health and provide for
their health care needs," said principal investigator Jane Holl, MD
, associate professor of
pediatrics, preventive medicine, and health care studies at the Feinberg School.
Holl also is medical director for patient safety and an attending physician at
Children's Memorial Hospital.
"What we learn will not only help children and families in the Chicago area,
but also children across the country," Holl said. "We want people to understand
why it's so important to participate."
Holl said she expects to begin recruiting families from Chicago and the
suburbs of Cook County in the summer of 2009. Northwestern will collaborate with
the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago School of
Public Health, which will help with community outreach and coordinate clinical
services for study participants in their areas. The National Opinion Research
Center will also participate.
The National Children's Study will assess the effects of environmental and
genetic factors on pregnant women, children and adults. Its goal is to prevent
and treat some of the nation's most serious health problems including autism,
birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
"Many diseases that occur in adulthood had a beginning in childhood,"
Holl said. "We can probably prevent or decrease many diseases by
understanding what leads to the disease and by intervening much earlier."
Study researchers will examine such things as what children eat, the air they
breathe, the water they drink, the safety of their neighborhoods, how they are
cared for and how often they see a doctor. Researchers also will look at
children's possible exposure to chemicals from materials used to construct their
homes and schools.
Scientists will analyze biological substances like blood, urine and hair from
study participants to test for exposure to environmental factors and examine how
these factors might influence their health.
The study centers were selected based on a strong ability to coordinate the
collection of data for the study, build extensive community networks for
recruiting eligible women and newborns and a capability to protect the privacy
of the information collected on participants.
The national study will recruit more than 100,000 children representative of
the entire population of American children.