December 19, 2007
Clark assisting nation's most extensive children's health study
Clark scientists are partners in National Children's Study
Researchers in the Environmental Science & Policy Program and Geographic Information Science Program, in Clark's Department of International Development, Community & Environment, will participate in the National Children's Study, the largest and most long term study ever conducted on how environmental and genetic factors impact children's health in the United States.
Photo: Clark and UMass NCS team. From left, Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, Asst Professor and GIS researcher; Onesky Aupont, UMass, Operations Manager and Co-Investigator at UMass; Octavia Taylor, Clark Program Manager on the project; Dr. Tom McLaughlin, Professor and Co-Principal Investigator; Dr. Marianne Felice, Chair of Pediatrics at UMass; and Tim Downs, Assistant Professor and Clark Principal Investigator on the project. Missing from this photo is Rob Goble, Research Professor on the project.
On Oct. 4, the National Children's Study announced contracts with 22 new centers across the country, the result of a $69 million federal grant for fiscal year 2007, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. Brown University, the University of Massachusetts, and Yale University are three of the new centers in New England. UMass is leading a research team that includes scientists from Clark University and Harvard University. Nationally, the study will 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, asthma, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Locally, the UMass-Clark-Harvard team will follow 1000 children in Worcester County.
"Clark is thrilled to participate in the National Children's Study in partnership with UMass. To have Clark faculty contribute to national efforts aimed at solving important issues related to children's health and development is precisely the sort of use-inspired research Clark stands for," noted Nancy Budwig, Dean of Graduate Studies and Research.
The NCS Clark team comprises assistant professor Tim Downs (Principal Investigator), assistant professor Yelena Ogneva-Himmelberger, and research professor Rob Goble.
Clark is responsible for two aspects: 1) sampling the indoor and outdoor environments that children inhabit (and that their mothers inhabit while pregnant), with emphasis on exposure to toxic chemicals; and 2) mapping and spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) of different kinds of environmental stress, including the presence of brownfields, the lack of green space, and adaptations like access to health care.
"In addition to environmental health risk assessment and health-related GIS, we bring experience of community-based participatory research (CBPR) from our existing NIH Environmental Justice partnership," says Downs. "CBPR actively engages participants to improve our contextual understanding of health. It also improves retention by engendering a sense of ownership of the project among mothers and children."
Dr. Marianne E. Felice, chairwoman of pediatrics at UMass, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette: "Centers had to prove that they had community support, the cooperation of hospitals and the ability to pull this off in Worcester County. For a study of this magnitude the two most important issues are recruitment and retention." She added that Clark is "an important partner in that effort, providing expertise in geographic information systems to map out the county and find people who reflect the socioeconomic, racial and ethnic diversity of the region."
Downs and IDCE assistant professor Laurie Ross are co-PIs on an $890,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health program "Environmental Justice: Partnerships for Communication". The program funds projects committed to enhancing minority participation in research and to facilitating communication among environmental health researchers, community health-care providers and community members. The 2004-2008 project, "Strengthening Vulnerable Communities in the Worcester Built Environment," measures different types of environmental stress, their impacts on health, and builds local capacity to respond.
Ogneva-Himmelberger currently collaborates with Fallon Clinic and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell on another National Institute of Health (NIH) project called "Proximity to Traffic, Air Toxic Exposures and the Development of Asthma in Children." In this study she uses GIS tools to estimate the exposure to traffic-related pollution in children diagnosed with asthma.
Goble has worked for many years on environmental health risk assessments, including a partnership funded by NIH to understand the disproportionate exposure of Native Americans to radiation in the vicinity of the Nevada Atomic Bomb Test Site.
Congress directed the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development to lead a national longitudinal study of environmental influences on children's health and development with other federal agencies in the Children's Health Act of 2000. It is from this directive that the National Children's Study was born.
To read more about the National Children's Study, visit online at