A sweeping assessment of children’s health

The University has been named a regional research participant in the National Children’s Study—the largest long-term study of children’s health ever conducted in the United States.

The study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, will follow an estimated 100,000 children in communities across the United States, from before birth to age 21. It will seek information to prevent and treat some of the nation’s most pressing health problems, including autism, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Over the next two decades, researchers from UD’s Center for Disabilities Studies, the School of Nursing and the Department of Individual and Family Studies, in partnership with Christiana Care Health System and the Nemours/Alfred I. du Pont Hospital for Children, will monitor the health of 1,100 children in New Castle County, Del.
The Delaware study site, which is one of 105 such sites selected for the nationwide initiative, is part of a regional collaboration managed by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Drexel University College of Medicine.

“We are excited to launch this long-term research partnership that will ultimately impact the health of our children as well as federal and state policy decisions,” says Bethany Hall-Long, associate professor of nursing in UD’s College of Health Sciences and the Delaware study center’s principal investigator. Hall-Long also holds a joint appointment as an associate policy scientist in the Health Services Policy Research Group in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy (CHEP).

“Here at UD, we will be busy with project management, community outreach, home visits and child health assessments. It is an honor to be part of such a terrific team,” Hall-Long says.

Deborah Amsden, a researcher at UD’s Center for Disabilities Studies in CHEP, is the project director. She will oversee day-to-day operations, from recruiting field staff to monitoring the extensive data on children and the environment that will be collected during the 25-year effort.

Martha Buell, professor, and Christine Ohannessian, associate professor, both in CHEP’s Department of Individual and Family Studies, also will play an integral role in the Delaware study center’s operation.

A major objective of the study is to examine how environmental inputs and genetic factors interact to affect the health and development of children, Amsden says.

“We’ll be collecting a great deal of information on environmental quality, including air and water samples from where these children live,” she says. “There will be opportunities for faculty and student involvement from across the University in this interdisciplinary project, which will provide access to a national protocol for collecting data on children and their environment over a long period of time.”

The study will officially launch in 2008, with the first data to be collected in 2009. In the first phase of the study, 250 children will be identified in the Delaware group, with successive groups of children to be added each year for five years.

The 105 U.S. locations selected for the study were chosen to be representative of the nation’s population. A national probability sample was used to select the counties in the study, which took into account such factors as race and ethnicity, income, education level, number of births and babies born with low birth weights.

The UD Center for Disabilities Studies is one of more than 60 University Centers for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities in the United States. It oversees a variety of initiatives and services involving early childhood, school-age children and adults.

—Tracey Bryant