Funding for U.S. children's study back on track

America's first large-scale longitudinal study of children's health issues is back on track with funding to see it through the final planning stages.

Congress recently appropriated $69 million for the National Children's Study, which it created in 2000 to study American children from pre-birth to age 21 and perhaps beyond. The goal is to track psychological, social, environmental and genetic factors that determine well-being, with emphasis on pregnancy, birth defects, asthma, obesity, diabetes, autism and other issues.

The appropriation will fund preparations through September, the fiscal year's end. To carry the study into the field will require at least $111 million for 2008. When field work begins, cost is expected to be about $150 million a year, says Sarah Keim, NCS deputy director. But future funding is not secure.

President Bush's 2007 budget proposal caught study advocates off guard when it didn't fund the study and put a similar amount into a proposed genetics study focused primarily on adults. There's no funding in his 2008 budget, either. But advocates — representing a big and varied cross-section of America, from the Chemical Council to the American Academy of Pediatrics — say that won't matter, as long as Congress continues to support and fund the study.

"The clear expectation is that Congress will be funding every subsequent stage," says Dr. Edward B. Clark, medical director of Primary Children's Medical Center and principal investigator of the study in the Salt Lake area, which has been named one of the first "vanguard centers."

"What this really signals is Congress' commitment to the study, even though the executive branch is not committed to it, he says. "Strong language" in the bill supports it. And advocates are working closely with the study's "congressional champions."

In December, with funding uncertain, Dr. Peter Scheidt, NCS director, said his office was moving ahead to create a strong infrastructure, while also preparing to close down. Last week, with a year's reprieve, his office released request for proposals from other sites that would like to be vanguard centers. They plan to name another 15 or 20 this year.

"The National Children's Study has the ability to look with greater breadth and depth at children's health, to see it in a new way," says Keim. Its size and scope means it can "answer so many more questions" than previous smaller studies have, including, perhaps, age-old nature vs. nurture questions. A handful of other countries, including Denmark and Norway, have also launched large-scale children's health studies, she adds.