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October 3, 2008 - 7:04PM
Wide-ranging health study to include Pinal kids
Amanda Keim, Tribune
Pinal County residents are going to be some of the first in Arizona to participate in a two-decade, nationwide study of children's health, thanks to a $44 million grant awarded to the University of Arizona's Department of Pediatrics.
The National Institutes of Health, which is running the National Children's Study, announced Friday that UA would be one of 12 new study centers for the initiative.
A total of 36 centers have been announced for the study since 2005.
The goal of the $3.2 billion study is to follow the health, growth and environment of 100,000 kids around the country from before birth until age 21 to get a better understanding of how diseases form.
"It's designed to really follow people to get a sense of health and well-being, how (kids) develop," said Mari Wilhelm, one of the UA professors involved with the study. "It's really going to be fascinating."
There will ultimately be 3,000 kids from Arizona participating in the study, or 1,000 each from Pinal, Apache and Maricopa counties.
An outreach phase will start in Pinal and Apache counties soon with data collection starting in about two years, Wilhelm said. Maricopa County will lag behind by about a year, although exact timelines aren't yet available.
This study will ultimately provide data on children's health that's more in-depth and wide-ranging than any study that's been completed before, said Cathy Martinez, an agent with UA's Pinal County Cooperative Extension who will be helping with the recruitment and outreach component of the study.
The study will look at multiple diseases and disorders, including autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, birth defects, diabetes, asthma and obesity, according to a press release.
Pinal County officials are excited to have such extensive data collected for the area, said county spokeswoman Heather Murphy.
"We may know the immunization rate for kids in Pinal County, but how that links to complications and problems later in life, whether they develop a disease ... the key scientific data that will come out of this study will give the medical community the tools to address the problems," Murphy said.
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