The National Children’s Study hopes to recruit 100,000 mothers who will allow them to monitor their babies from birth to the age of 21. It will be the largest children’s health study ever done. The project will cost something in the neighborhood of 7 billion dollars and will attempt to understand the role that environment plays in children’s health. The new understanding the study’s organizers hope to gain from watching their 100,000 subjects grow up will help the generations of children to come after them live healthier, happier lives.
In order to get a real sense of how environmental factors are interacting with genetics in our kids, researchers are going over their subjects’ lives with a fine toothed comb. They will be collecting every kind of biological and environmental sample you could think of – from blood and urine to toenail clippings to dust from pregnant mother’s bed sheets and the tap water they drink. Placenta will be collected at birth, as will the babies first bowel movement. Additionally, participants will face an intense series of questions addressing psychosocial, demographic, emotional and neighborhood issues that might affect a child.
In order to collect as diverse a sample as possible, recruiters will be looking for subjects across 105 counties in the US. The idea is to “be a representation of the nation’s children, which means that it will include children from all social economic groups, and children from all races and ethnic groups,” according to Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD, Deputy Director of the National Institute of Child Health, in an informational video on the study’s web site.
With chronic illness on the rise in American children, this study is more important than ever.
For more information on this study, visit their official Web site: http://www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov/Pages/default.aspx
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