SPH Leads Largest Study Ever on Child Health

The School of Public Health has been awarded $14 million over five years to lead a landmark study on child health. It will be largest and most comprehensive child health study ever conducted in the United States.

The SPH will become one of 22 research centers to join the National Children's Study, a federal project that will follow 100,000 children from before birth to age 21. The project sets out to answer how genes and the environment attribute to pressing health problems such as asthma, autism, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and birth defects. This is the first time a study will document exposures prior to and during pregnancy and into childhood and adolescence.

"What we learn will help not only children and families in Minnesota but children across the country," says SPH professor Pat McGovern, who will lead the study of 1,000 Ramsey County children.

McGovern and the University research team will work in tandem with other study centers across the United States. The centers were selected to cover 105 study locations that together are representative of the U.S. population. McGovern's team will start recruiting families in 2009 in various Ramsey County neighborhoods. By collecting information from parents before conception, during pregnancy, and beyond--as well as information about air quality, food intake, and other environmental conditions--researchers hope to identify factors that influence health as children grow.

The study is part of a collaborative effort from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency.

To hear a Public Health Moment on this study, go to http://blog.lib.umn.edu/sphpod/moment/.