More than 100,000 children across the United States will participate in the National Children's Study, as researchers will follow children from before birth until age 21. Study scientists will examine family genetics, neighborhoods and schools, chemical exposures, food and water, as well as children's social and behavioral environments. The Queens Vanguard Center will be led by the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment, our nation's first academic research and policy center to examine the links between exposure to toxic pollutants and childhood illness.
"When completed, the National Children's Study will be the richest information resource for questions related to child health that this country has ever seen." said Philip Landrigan, MD, Director of the Queens Vanguard Center and the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment and Chairman of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Conducting this study in Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, will provide a diverse population essential to ensuring that results are widely applicable."
Joining in the Queens Vanguard Center effort are researchers from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Dentistry of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
"Mount Sinai has long been a leader in the study, prevention and treatment of environmental and occupational disease," said Kenneth L. Davis, MD, President and CEO of The Mount Sinai Medical Center and Dean of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "We are proud to be part of this landmark study which holds so much promise for the children of Queens and our nation."
"Many of the diseases that the Children's Study will examine – obesity, injury, asthma, schizophrenia, autism and childhood cancer – have reached epidemic proportions, and cost Americans nearly $642 billion annually," said Leo Trasande, MD, the Mount Sinai Site Director for the Queens Vanguard Center. "The National Children's Study will form the basis of child health guidance and policy for generations to come, and will not only to improve the lives of so many children, but save our nation billions of dollars in health care costs."
The National Children's Study is led by a consortium of federal agency partners, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- through the National Institutes of Health (the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Center for Children's Health and the Environment is the nation's first academic research and policy center to examine the links between exposure to toxic pollutants and childhood illness. CCHE was established in 1998 within the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The mission of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment (CCHE) of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine is to protect children against environmental threats to health.
The Mount Sinai Medical Center
The Mount Sinai Medical Center encompasses The Mount Sinai Hospital and Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The Mount Sinai Hospital is one of the nation's oldest, largest and most-respected voluntary hospitals. Founded in 1852, Mount Sinai today is a 1,171-bed tertiary-care teaching facility that is internationally acclaimed for excellence in clinical care. Last year, nearly 48,000 people were treated at Mount Sinai as inpatients, more than 72,000 received care in the emergency department, and the outpatient department recorded nearly 470,000 visits. Mount Sinai School of Medicine is internationally recognized as a leader in groundbreaking clinical and basic-science research, as well as innovative approaches to medical education. Mount Sinai ranks 9th among the nation's 125 medical schools in the percentage of graduates who go on to faculty positions in medical schools across the country. Mount Sinai also is in the top 25 in receipt of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants with a total of more than $154 million during Fiscal Year 2003. Information about Mount Sinai can be found online at: www.mountsinai.org and www.mssm.edu