UD named a regional research participant in National Children
...( The University of Delaware has been ...)

The University of Delaware has been named a regional research participant in the National Children's Study--the largest long-term study of children's health ever conducted in the United States.

The study, which is funded by the National Institutes of Health, will follow an estimated 100,000 children in communities across the United States, from before birth to 21 years of age. It will seek information to prevent and treat some of the nation's most pressing health problems, including autism, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

Over the next two decades, researchers from UD's Center for Disabilities Studies, the School of Nursing and the Department of Individual and Family Studies, in partnership with Christiana Care Health System and the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, will monitor the health of 1,100 children in New Castle County, Del., which is one of 105 study sites selected for the nationwide initiative. The Delaware study site is part of a regional collaboration managed by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Drexel University College of Medicine.

We are excited to launch this long-term research partnership that will ultimately impact the health of our children as well as federal and state policy decisions, said Bethany Hall-Long, associate professor of nursing in UD's College of Health Sciences and the Delaware study center's principal investigator. Hall-Long also holds a joint appointment as an associate policy scientist in the Health Services Policy Research Group in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy.

Here at UD, we will be busy with project management, community outreach, home visits and child health assessments. It is an honor to be part of such a terrific team, Hall-Long noted.

Deborah Amsden, a researcher at UD's Center for Disabilities Studies in the College of Human Services, Education and Public Policy, is the project director. She will o
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