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Long-Term Children's Health Study Not Included in Budget

Posted on: Monday, 13 February 2006, 06:00 CST

DALLAS _ Medical researchers fear that the most ambitious study of children's health ever planned will be lost to federal budget cuts.

The National Children's Study was to follow 100,000 children from the womb to age 21. Authorized by Congress in 2000, it was scheduled to begin enrollment in 2007. Scientists have already spent more than $50 million in planning, design and pilot studies.

But the Bush administration's fiscal 2007 budget, released last week, does not include any money for the study and dictates that planning for the research must stop by the end of this year.

"I was outraged," said Dr. Alan Fleischman of the New York Academy of Medicine, who heads the study's advisory committee. "We stand to lose the answers to the questions that parents and grandparents are asking every day."

Rates of diabetes, autism, asthma and other conditions are rising in American children. Usually, no one can say why disease afflicts one child and spares another. The National Children's Study was designed to help explain how genetics, chemical exposures, social circumstance and other factors combine to make children ill.

Even some basic questions are now unanswerable: What makes one child more prone to obesity than another? What causes the most common birth defects?

"We can't just keep diagnosing children with more and more of these conditions without trying to understand this," said Dr. Fernando Guerra, director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, who is also an adviser on the study.

Study researchers had planned to collect information from questionnaires, biological samples and even dust samples from the children's homes. By watching the health of the children as they grew, and analyzing these detailed measures of their surroundings, researchers hoped to learn why some children get diseases. Scientists say the study had to be large to provide statistically sound conclusions.

Guerra and others sent a letter to President Bush last week pleading for continuation of the study, which would cost $69 million next year to launch. The study was predicted to cost more than $2 billion over the next 25 years.

Study organizers had designated seven primary sites to enroll children, but planned to expand that to more than 100 counties. Dr. Karen Meador, director of clinical research for Children's Medical Center Dallas, attended a meeting in November to discuss adding local children to the study.

Meador, who also holds an MBA, called the study groundbreaking but said she grew concerned at the meeting when project leaders could not answer her basic questions about its expense. Without more information on the potential cost, she was reluctant to commit Children's and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

If budget planners at the White House got similar unclear information, Meador said she could understand how the project might have seemed too grand.

"I think any time that a study proposal is being submitted, the individuals requesting the funds have to make the strongest argument," Meador said.

The study's director, Dr. Peter Scheidt of the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, said the financial details of the project were clear _ and so was the hefty price tag. The study, he said, is simply a victim of lean times.

"I think it's fiscal realities," he said, expressing disappointment.

"The administration feels this is a decision they need to make," Scheidt said.

Researchers involved in the project say they have not given up hope that it will continue.

"The president's proposal is penny wise and pound foolish," said Dr. Leo Trasande of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In addition to providing insights to improve children's health, he believes the study may save money for the next generation. The medical problems that were a main focus of the study cost the U.S. more than $640 billion in annual health care costs, he said. Reducing a tiny fraction of that would pay for the study.

Trasande said he and other supporters of the study would take their case to Capitol Hill.

"Congress now has the ball in their court," Trasande said.

___

(c) 2006, The Dallas Morning News.

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Source: The Dallas Morning News

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