Kimberly Lakes, assistant professor, UC Irvine, and Jayakaran Job, associate professor, Loma Linda University, announce that CSUSB and LLU have been selected to be part of one of the study centers for the National Children's Study.
October 5, 2007 By Public Affairs Staff

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. - California State University, San Bernardino and Loma Linda University are part of one of the 22 centers named Thursday, Oct. 4, in the next phase of the largest study of child health and development ever attempted in the United States.

The National Children's Study will eventually follow a representative sample of 100,000 children from conception to age 21 - including 1,000 in San Bernardino County - seeking information to prevent and treat some of the nation's most pressing health problems, including autism, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

The San Bernardino County location is part of one of 22 new study centers of the National Children's Study. The study is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the Environmental Protection Agency.

CSUSB and LLU will partner to lead the San Bernardino County study location, which will manage local participant recruitment and data collection.

"This will be a profoundly valuable study, and it's an important achievement of the two faculties that Cal State San Bernardino and Loma Linda University were chosen to be lead institutions in San Bernardino County," said Albert Karnig, president of Cal State San Bernardino. "I'm proud of each of the participants involved in crafting the proposal. Simply put, this landmark study will have enormous long-term impact in improving the health of children and families in the Inland Empire and throughout the nation, as well as give direction to other research aimed at saving lives and fostering better health."

"As the largest long-term study of children's health and development ever to be conducted in the United States, the National Children's Study is unprecedented in scope and magnitude," said Lyn Behrens, president of Loma Linda University, the Medical Center and the Children's Hospital. "We are delighted to collaborate with California State University, San Bernardino in this historic effort, which is going to have a significant impact both locally and nationally. We are also proud to partner with the County Department of Public Health, First 5 of San Bernardino, the Children's Network, the various hospitals and health care providers, and numerous other local organizations who are actively involved in improving the health and welfare of our children."

"The study includes a fairly comprehensive range of biological, physical, genetic, social, cultural and other environmental factors starting from before birth that can be harmful or helpful to child health and development," said Jayakaran Job, co-principal investigator and faculty at the Loma Linda University Schools of Public Health and Medicine. "By examining relationships between environments and children's growth, development and progress, this study seeks to unravel the basic causes of many of today's childhood diseases and disorders, some of which are even reaching epidemic proportions."

"What we learn will help not only children and families in San Bernardino County, but it will help children across the U.S.," said Kimberley Lakes, co-principle investigator, assistant professor in Pediatrics at the University of California, Irvine, and former associate director of the Institute for Child Development and Family Relations at Cal State San Bernardino. "The study's findings will help improve child health and set policies for generations to come."

The National Children's Study will eventually follow a representative sample of 100,000 children from before birth to age 21, seeking information to prevent and treat some of the nation's most pressing health problems, including autism, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

In total, the study will be conduced in 105 previously designated study locations across the United States that together are representative of the entire U.S. population. A national probability sample was used to select the counties in the study, which took into account factors, including race and ethnicity, income, education level, number of births and number of babies born with low birth weights.

Other investigators involved in the San Bernardino County location include Sybil Carrere, associate professor, Department of Psychology and director, Institute of Child Development and Family Relations, CSUSB; Richard Chinnock, professor and chair, Department of Pediatrics, LLU School of Medicine; Bryan T Oshiro, chief, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, LLU School of Medicine; and Pramil Singh, associate professor, Epidemiology/Biostatistics, LLU School of Public Health.

The study GIS specialist is Seth Wiafe, academic director of the Health Geographics program and the Geoinformatics/Resource Center, LLU. Bruce Smith, medical officer for maternal, child and adolescent health, San Bernardino County Department of Public Health serves as a key Study consultant.

The National Children's Study began in response to the Children's Health Act of 2000, when Congress directed the NICHD and other federal agencies to undertake a national, long-term study of children's health and development in relation to environmental exposures (see: Section 1004, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=106_cong_bills&docid=f:h4365enr.txt.

The announcement of new study centers follows earlier study milestones, including the 2004 announcement of the 105 study locations and the establishment of the Vanguard Centers (the first seven locations, established in 2005). One of these Vanguard Centers is at the University of California, Irvine, directed by James M. Swanson, professor of Pediatrics. The study location for San Bernardino County will work closely with an expanded Orange County Vanguard Center that will also include a new location in San Diego County.

"Geographically, San Bernardino County is the largest county in the U.S., which presents significant challenges for the implementation of the National Children's Study," Swanson said. "We are very fortunate that exceptional investigators from Cal State San Bernardino and Loma Linda University, along with the outstanding partners they have assembled, were willing to accept these challenges and prepare an excellent proposal. They were chosen in a very competitive national review. The study will be in good hands in San Bernardino County."

The San Bernardino NCS team will begin pre-recruitment activities in September 2008, including hiring and training staff, meeting with local community groups and health care professionals to inform them about the study, and forming community advisory boards to provide ongoing community guidance on a range of study-related issues. Currently, recruitment for participants for the study is planned to begin in 2010.

For more information, contact the Institute for Child Development and Family Relations at Cal State San Bernardino at (909) 537-3844 and visit http://icdfr.csusb.edu/.

For more information about Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university's Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 and visit http://news.csusb.edu.

For more information about Loma Linda University, contact the LLU Office of University Relations at (909) 558-4526 and visit www.llu.edu.