Mt. Sinai To Get $20 Million

A Queens hospital has been selected to spearhead the National Children’s Study, the largest such effort ever conducted focusing on the environmental effects on human development.
The Center for Children’s Health and the Environment (CCHE) of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine will receive $20 million in federal funding, as well as additional grants throughout the life of the 21-year study.
The $20 million is part of a $3 billion dollar nationwide study that will focus on different areas of childhood development that are affected by the environment.
“The National Children’s Study’s groundbreaking research will be instrumental in shaping future environmental and health practices in Queens,” said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. “Queens faces significant environmental challenges that deserve serious public policy attention, but we can’t act without knowledge of the environment’s impacts on health.”
Mount Sinai’s CCHE is one of six sites selected throughout the United States to pilot the study, which will look at effects ranging from biological and chemical factors, genetics, cultural and family influences and outcomes and geographic locations, of more than 100,000 children across the country and 1,250 here in Queens. Researchers will monitor the children from birth until age 21 analyzing how these factors interact with each other and the effects they have on children.
“We’ll be looking at not only chemical exposure, lead, pesticides and air pollution, but also behavioral and social factors and their impact on learning and development,” said Dr. Leo Trasande, Assistant Director of the Center for Children’s Health and the Environment.
Researchers will begin recruiting women in July 2007, after the National Institute of Health selects the exact neighborhoods within Queens where the study will take place.
Once the women are selected, researchers will take samples from the children approximately every three to six months for the first few years of the child’s life, and then every one to three years once they reach school age according to Trasande.
One of the goals of the study will be to focus on preventing diseases including childhood asthma, cancers, obesity and other disorders.
“Child health is at a crisis moment with rates of these diseases doubling and tripling,” Trasande said. “The National Children’s Study offers us the best opportunity to better understand the reason for the rising incidents.”
pdavis@queenscourier.com