Child health study funding increases in Mich.
A group of the state’s top research universities, health care systems and health departments will use more than $50 million in funding to assess children for more than 20 years.
MSU, as a member of the Michigan Alliance for the National Children’s Study, received $57 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, last week toward the Michigan component of the National Children’s Study.
The funding will expand the group’s role in the largest national research project to study children’s health by including four additional Michigan counties — Genesee, Grand Traverse, Lenawee and Macomb — in the study.
Wayne County was among the first 30 counties nationwide included in the study. Last fall, the alliance secured $18.5 million for its work there.
The national project will monitor more than 100,000 children from before birth to 21 years old. In Michigan, the project will follow about 1,000 participants from each of the five counties over the same span of time to study impacts of environmental influences, physical living conditions and socioeconomic factors on children’s health.
Researchers hope information collected during the project will provide answers to the causes of medical conditions such as autism and cerebral palsy, Nigel Paneth said. Paneth is a professor of epidemiology, pediatrics and human development and the project’s principal investigator.
“These are rare events and if you want to really study them before they happen, which is key here, you really have to study starting with a healthy mother and see what’s different from a child who gets it,” Paneth said.
More than five years ago, Michigan’s top research universities — MSU, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University — joined with the Henry Ford Health System, Michigan Department of Community Health and local health departments to form the alliance.
Results from the project could provide valuable information for years to come, said Robert Sokol, director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development and distinguished professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the Wayne State University School of Medicine.
The alliance began preparing for the study in 2002 and will begin enrolling Wayne County participants in 2010, followed by Grand Traverse and Lenawee counties in 2011 and Genesee and Macomb counties in 2012, said Daniel Keating, director of the U-M Center for Human Growth and Development and lead investigator of the U-M portion of the study.
“Each of these counties pose its own set of challenges,” Keating said.
Published on Tuesday, October 7, 2008
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