National Children's Study Launches Cache County Effort

The National Children’s Study, the largest study ever to assess the effects of the environment on maternal and child health, launches its efforts in Cache County Saturday, Nov. 13, by sponsoring a National Children’s Study night at the USU-Weber State basketball game.

 

This event signals the start of a year-long recruitment effort to engage women in Cache County who are pregnant or likely to become pregnant in the near future. The study in Cache County is a collaboration between Utah State University and the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Utah.

 

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to invest in our children’s health and well-being,” said professor Mark Innocenti, the study’s principal investigator in Cache County and researchers USU’s Center for Persons with Disabilities in Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services. “I can’t think of anywhere else in the country where the population is more focused on the future of children.” 

 

Nearly 20,000 randomly selected households in Cache Valley will receive a postcard and questionnaire inviting them to participate in the study. Those who respond will receive a follow-up phone call from study staff to determine if someone in the household is eligible to join the study.

 

Cache County is one of 30 locations to take the National Children’s Study into the field this year. They will be piloting three different recruitment strategies to assess the best method of engaging and enrolling participants. Salt Lake County was one of seven initial locations to launch the study last year and has so far enrolled 270 families and has seen 120 babies born into the study.

 

The full nationwide study will follow as many as 100,000 children from early life in the womb through adulthood, seeking information to assess the role environmental factors play in relation to such health conditions as autism, birth defects, heart disease and obesity. Researchers plan to examine the food children eat, the air they breathe, their schools and neighborhoods, frequency of health care provider visits and even the composition of the dust in their homes.

 

The National Children’s Study, authorized in the Children’s Act of 2000, is led by a consortium of federal agency partners: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including the Eunice Kennedy ShriverNational Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

 

Families interested in joining the study, or who know someone who might be interested, can contact the National Children’s Study in Cache County at 435-797-5437 or ncs@usu.edu or visit the website. 

 

Writer: Tim Vitale, 435-797-1356, tim.vitale@usu.edu