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CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH - EPA AND DHHS COLLABORATE TO ADDRESS LONG-TERM HEALTH ISSUES
Citation:
MENDOLA, P., R. BROWN, J. J. QUACKENBOSS, E. BLACKBURN, B. R. SONAWANE, S. LUNDQUIST, D. SCHEIDT, M. KLEBANOFF, S. KEIM, S. NEWTON, R. SHIH, S. KESSEL, M. YEARGIN-ALLSOPP, A. CORREA, A. BRANUM, K. SCHOENDORF, L. BERMAN, W. GELKE, AND R. CURTIN. CHILDREN'S ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH RESEARCH - EPA AND DHHS COLLABORATE TO ADDRESS LONG-TERM HEALTH ISSUES. Presented at USEPA Science Forum, Washington, DC, May 16 - 18, 2006.
Description:
Children's environmental health is important to the mission of both the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Over the past seven years, federal experts from a variety of disciplines including survey sampling design (CDC/NCHS), information technology (NIH/NICHD, EPA/OEI), laboratory procedures (CDC/NCEH), perinatal and pediatric research (NIH/NICHD, CDC/NCBDDD, EPA/ORD) and environmental assessment (EPA/ORD, NIH/NIEHS) have come to together to advance the field of children's environmental health research. These types of collaborative efforts, exemplified by the joint planning for the National Children's Study (NCS), take advantage of the broad federal scientific expertise available and encourage leveraging of resources across federal agencies, avoiding duplication of effort and promoting the exchange of information.
Since 1999, intensive planning efforts have been underway at EPA, CDC, NIH and the Office of the Secretary of DHHS to coordinate a large comprehensive study of children's environmental health. If funding for the study is made available, the NCS will be the largest long-term study of children's health and development ever conducted in the United States. The study would follow approximately 100,000 children, measuring exposures and health outcomes from before birth to age 21, to better understand the link between the environments in which children are raised and their physical and mental health and development. More information about the study is available on our website: www.nationalchildrensstudy.gov and you can join our Study Assembly to receive study updates through email by registering on our home page.
EPA and DHHS have worked well together in the NCS planning process, along with contributions from a host of other public and private partners committed to improving children's health. This collaborative planning effort has been a model of interagency cooperation which could be generalized to other programs in children's environmental health and other research areas of mutual interest to DHHS and EPA.