BENTON COUNTY : Children’s set to run study on area youth
Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008
The Arkansas Children’s Hospital Research Institute has received $ 14. 4 million to help lead the first phase of a landmark study investigating child health in Benton County.
Benton County was selected in 2004 as one of the 105 counties that will participate in the National Children’s Study, which aims to analyze environmental, social and biological influences to help answer questions about premature births, obesity, asthma, autism and other diseases and health issues.
The National Institutes of Health announced it had selected the Little Rock-based research group to run one of 72 planned study centers on Friday. The Benton County study is the only site in Arkansas.
Researchers nationwide will follow 100, 000 children from before their birth until they’re 21, making it the largest study of pregnant women in the United States, said Duane Alexander, director of Washington D. C.-based Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
About 1, 000 children from Benton County will be included in the 25-year study, which will have at least four, five-year phases. The Research Institute will have to apply for funding for subsequent phases.
“It’s the largest and most important study of the origins of child health and well-being that’s ever been conducted in this country,” said Jim Robbins, a researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, which will be working at the Benton County study center.
Charlotte Hobbs, director of the Arkansas Center for Birth Defects Research and Prevention at the research institute, will be in charge of the Benton County study center.
The research institute will work with the Arkansas Department of Health, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Benton County obstetricians and pediatricians to collect the data.
The Benton County study center is expected to hire between 40 and 50 people who will work at the Centers for Children in Lowell and other office space it rents for the projects.
Hobbs said she’d set up town hall meetings within the next two months to inform people about the study and start generating enthusiasm. They are looking for any woman in Benton County of childbearing years. The study is supposed to reflect current demographics in the U. S. population with age, race and where the children live.
The first mothers in Benton County should be enrolled sometime in 2011.
“One of our goals was to have wonderful response from Benton County participants,” she said, adding that Arkansans are known to be engaged in health issues.
Hobbs said she’s specifically interested in learning more about premature births.
The study is expected to cost more than $ 3 billion and is sponsored by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Funding for the study, renewed annually is allocated by Congress, Alexander said.
To contact this reporter: aotoole@arkansasonline. com
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