The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has awarded the University and its partner, Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a five-year, $14.1 million contract to participate in the National Children's Study, a research project dedicated to improving the "health and well-being of children."
The NICHD, part of the National Institutes of Health, initiated the National Children's Study under the federal Children's Health Act of 2000. The study was created to examine the effects of environmental conditions and stimuli on the health and development of children. It designates 22 new research "centers" - which include universities, hospitals and other medical research facilities - to join the existing 83 centers in conducting the survey.
According to Stephen Buka, professor of community health and director of the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology, the University was named a lead institution after "intense" competition for the contract. Buka is the principal investigator for the Providence center.
Using the information gathered by watching children who are infants today over a long period of time, researchers hope to illuminate the environmental origins of childhood diseases such as asthma, autism and diabetes and gain a more thorough understanding of birth defects and injuries, and learning, behavioral and mental health disorders.
In Rhode Island, the Brown-Women and Infants team will look at 10,000 households and then enlist 1,000 Providence children from those homes in the study.
Buka told The Herald that there would be opportunities for field work and research opportunities for all students. Appropriated funds are "earmarked for student learning opportunities," he said.
And while he was "hesitant to say that there will be opportunities for students to go knock on doors and collect data, there clearly will be opportunities for students to learn about the conduct of such studies and the analysis of the data," Buka said.
Eli Adashi, dean of medicine and biological sciences, announced the contract Thursday at a press conference in Alumnae Hall. Adashi stressed that "it is decidedly this type of collaboration (among all of the organizations involved) which allows us to ask bigger and bolder questions."
Constance Howes, president and chief executive officer of Women and Infants Hospital, added, "This opportunity to work in a collaborative way to look at the environmental and genetic influences on the development of children will really help us to focus in on the social disparities, the physical surroundings, the behavioral influences, the cultural and family differences that impact each child and each family as they raise those children."
In addition to commending the "phenomenal collaborative spirit" of the Providence-based study center, Buka compared the health status of the nation's children to a "barometer" of what to expect in the years to come and shared thoughts from the perspective of a scientist who was actually doing the "heavy lifting" for the study.
"The health of our children is the health of the nation. That's not rhetoric - that's an empirical statement of fact. Children with disorders grow up to be adults with disorders," Buka explained. "So, child health is essential and U.S. children are not healthy. As you heard, there are high rates of asthma, obesity, autism, ADD, disabilities, injuries. We're in bad shape, and it's worsening."
Buka said that the handful of problems that he listed account for approximately $600 billion of expenses in the United States each year but that this study - which, according to Buka is the largest ever undertaken of its kind - will provide "scientists with the knowledge that will allow us to know how to act."
Gov. Donald Carcieri '65 also congratulated the University and Women & Infants Hospital at the press conference. He praised his alma mater for "engaging in our community in a much more broadly based, much more aggressive, much more ambitious" way.
He continued by citing the "alarming" incidents among children today of autism, obesity and diabetes and the ramifications of these incidents could cause.
Maureen Phipps, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, added that in addition to children, "This study is critical to understanding how to improve the health of women." Although primarily focused on infants, the study will provide valuable data on women's health before, during and after pregnancy.
William Waters Jr., deputy director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, discussed the potential for helping scientists identify the roots of childhood disease, which would benefit the state of Rhode Island and eventually the nation. "The future of public health in Rhode Island is much brighter today," he said.
The study is supported broadly in Rhode Island by the Providence Community Health Centers, the Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island and United Healthcare. Following in the footsteps of other long-term biomedical research projects such as the Women's Health Initiative, the study will sample 100,000 infants from across the country and observe them from before birth to age 21.
The 22 new research centers will monitor 26 representative counties, of which 15 are in the eastern half of the United States and 11 are in the West. At each study center, employees and workers divide their counties into sub-sections and begin a search for mothers who are or will become pregnant.
