September 30, 2005 -- Nationwide Study Will Track 100,000 Children to Adulthood

The largest study ever undertaken of children from birth to age 21 yesterday named six “Vanguard Centers” that will pilot the first phases of the study, which is expected to follow the health and development of 100,000 children in an effort to determine environmental influences on human health and their relationship to genetic constitution. Led by a consortium of federal agency partners including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency, researchers will examine such factors as the food children eat, the air they breathe, their schools and neighborhoods, and even the dust in their homes, to try to seek the root causes of childhood and adult diseases such as autism, heart disease, and obesity. The six Vanguard Centers announced yesterday are University of California, Irvine; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York; Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Drexel University School of Public Health, Philadelphia; University of Utah, Salt Lake City; and University of Wisconsin, Madison.