The National Children’s Study has chosen the Duke Primary Care Research Consortium at Duke University Medical Center as one of six participating centers for its pilot study examining the effects of environmental influences on the health and development of children. The pilot study will determine the feasibility of gathering participants’ data through primary care doctors nationwide.
Funded by Congress during former President Bill Clinton’s term in office and sponsored in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Children’s Study will attempt to find connections between participants’ environments and their health and future development. According to the study’s website, a participant’s “environment” will encompass genetics, physical and geographical locations and biological, chemical and social factors.
The study will monitor more than 100,000 children across the country from before birth until age 21, making it the largest planned epidemiological study of children of its kind in the country
“Since this study is following so many kids, the hard part is to maintain relationships and limit the loss of follow-up,” said Dr. Chip Walter, associate professor of pediatrics and principal investigator for the study. He added that primary care doctors—the main data collectors for the pilot study—will be key because they “are out on the front lines seeing the patients.”
The Duke Primary Care Research Consortium will collect data from 20 children from nine clinical practices and from several pregnant women from four prenatal practices for the pilot study. Data collection will begin this week and last for two to three months. Researchers will collect medical and nutritional histories, physical measurements and a urine sample from all participants, a medical literacy test from pregnant women and a developmental assessment of the children.
But Dr. Rowena Dolor, director of Duke’s Primary Care Research Consortium and co-investigator for the study, noted that the data gathered during the preliminary study will be used for procedural purposes only.
“We are making sure we can collect this data—no actual test will be done,” Dolor said. “In the main study, they will be looking for and doing a variety of tests.”
The entire National Children’s Study will begin in one to two years depending on the results from this pilot study. Preliminary results from the first years could be released as soon as 2008, according to the study’s website.
Researchers will use the data collected in the full study to better understand and improve children’s well-being—a statistic some experts say has languished in the last few decades. According to the Child Well-Being Index, created by Kenneth Land, John Franklin Crowell professor of sociology at Duke, children’s well-being has increased only slightly since 1975.
Other primary care practice-based research networks chosen for the project include the Great Lakes Research and Practice Network in Michigan, L.A. Net in California, the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, the Oregon Rule Practice Space Research Network and the Rainbow Office-based Clinical Research Network in Ohio. The New York Presbyterian Research Network will be a backup clinic in case patient sample size at the six centers is smaller than expected.
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