O.C. Is Up for Role in Child Study

Orange County is in the running to be one of the first eight areas nationwide to participate in a study of how environmental surroundings affect the health of children, a government researcher announced Tuesday at UC Irvine.

The federally funded National Children’s Study, sponsored by several health and environmental agencies, will collect information on about 100,000 children in 101 areas across the country beginning in 2007. Their health will be monitored from before birth until they turn 21.

Orange County was chosen randomly among a group of large and socially diverse locations, said Peter C. Scheidt, director of the study.

“Because Orange County is so large, it has a lot of weight in the study,” he said, adding that the economic and ethnic diversity here also weighs in the county’s favor. The Collaborative Perinatal Project, the most recent similar effort, followed 40,000 pregnant women and their children in the 1960s. Among that study’s breakthrough discoveries were links between the effects of rubella and alcohol consumption on the fetus during pregnancy.

Orange County is vying to become one of the first research centers in the nation; each such center will track the health of about 1,000 children. A final selection will be made in the fall.

The study will rely on census-like door-to-door surveys and in-office visits with nurses or research specialists and will focus on a range of influences in a child’s life, including genetics, diet, pesticide exposure and neighborhood violence.

The results will be used to determine the effects that a child’s environment has on conditions such as obesity, diabetes and asthma. Preliminary findings are expected in 2009.

To help with recruitment, the researchers may enlist the help of local nonprofits and schools.

Officials with one such group, Maternal Outreach Management System, which treats low-income pregnant women in the county, said news of the study was welcome.

“To me, this is like attaching hard-core data to something we’ve known intuitively for years” -- that environment affects health, said Pamela Pimentel, executive director of MOMS.