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Waukesha County to Live Under Microscope; It's Among a Handful Chosen for a National Health Study

Posted on: Friday, 30 September 2005, 15:00 CDT

By SUSANNE QUICK

A future generation of Waukesha County residents will be recruited as part of the largest study ever undertaken to monitor and assess environmental effects on children. The National Children's Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency, announced Thursday that Waukesha County would become one of six pilot study centers awarded with the responsibility to kick off the study.

The study will follow children from the womb and in some cases pre-conception to adulthood. Study designers hope the program eventually will expand to include 100,000 children at 105 centers selected to represent various geographical, ethnic and socioeconomic regions in the country.

But it's the initial pilot sites that will set the tone and pave the way for the rest of the study.

The Waukesha portion of the study hopes to draw 1,200 participants.

The principal investigators of the Waukesha site are from the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

They will be supported by other local and state organizations, including the state Department of Health and Family Services, the National Opinion Research Center, Marquette University, UW Marine and Freshwater Biomedical Sciences Center/ Institute for Environmental Health, the Children's Research Institute, the Children's Service Society of Wisconsin and others.

"The only way to mount a study of this magnitude and complexity is to involve the expertise and resources of a broad coalition of community and academic partners," said Maureen Durkin, associate professor of population health sciences at UW-Madison, and one of the co-investigators on the project.

She has high hopes for the outcome, she said, adding that the study is expected to allow researchers and health care officials to "determine the root causes of many childhood and adult diseases."

Other communities selected as pilot sites include:

-- Orange County, Calif., with research led by the University of California, Irvine.

-- Duplin County, N.C.; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

-- Queens County, N.Y.; Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

-- Montgomery County, Pa.; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Drexel University.

-- Salt Lake County, Utah; University of Utah.

The awardees were announced at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

"This study is not just an exercise in trying to satisfy our scientific curiosity," said Dixie Snider of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is co-sponsoring the study with the NIH and the Environmental Protection Agency. "We're going to use the results to improve the health of our population."

In Waukesha, recruitment will not start until 2007. In the meantime, study collaborators will reach out to the community in order to understand residents' health concerns and interests.

They will try to coordinate the project so that community groups and individuals will have a voice in the direction of the project.

Christine Cronk, associate professor of pediatrics at the Medical College, said the goal is to recruit women of childbearing age. Organizers would like to include women who want to have children and women who don't, because nearly 50% of all pregnancies are unplanned.

Children of women who become pregnant will be monitored throughout pregnancy and beyond. In-home data collection, questionnaires and blood samples will be taken from participants.

Researchers say the first results of the study could appear as early as 2010.

Of particular interest to study designers are the environmental and genetic determinants that lead to conditions such as diabetes, asthma, premature birth, obesity and other conditions related to childhood.

"We'll look at the foods they eat, the air they breathe," the dust in their home and anything else that might affect a child's development, said Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, of the National Institutes of Health.

The project is estimated to cost $2.7 billion over the next 25 years. The current UW and Medical College contract is for $16.2 million, and that is expected to be extended as funding permits.

Other local collaborators in the project include Waukesha County Health and Human Services, ProHealth Care, Covenant Health Care, Community Memorial Hospital, Waukesha Family Practice Center and La Casa de Esperanza.

"I have high hopes for this study," said Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who mentioned that 2005 was the year of the healthy child. This study "may very well usher in the century of the healthy American."

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More information about the study can be found at: www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov.

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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