Children's Study Reaches Milestone

New Van to Help With 36-month Appointments

STAFF PHOTO JASON IVESTER Gwen Wiley, left, with the National Children’s Study, describes Thursday the workings of their data collection van.
STAFF PHOTO JASON IVESTER Gwen Wiley, left, with the National Children’s Study, describes Thursday the workings of their data collection van.

ROGERS -- Turning 3 years old is a big milestone in a child's life. For the toddler, it usually means they are dressing and feeding themselves and potty training.

For parents, it means they survived the terrible twos.

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It holds even more meaning for the 200 Benton County children enrolled in the National Children's Study. The study visit after the child turns 36 months old includes a handful of cognitive and biological tests and an extensive interview for the mother.

The National Children's study is the largest long-term evaluation attempted to gauge environmental and genetic influences on children's health in the United States. Researchers hope to discover links to why a wide range of conditions -- from autism to cerebral palsy and from asthma and obesity -- develop in children.

It will include more than 100,000 children across the U.S. from birth to age 21.

Loy Bailey, administrator of the Benton County Health Department, said the study has the potential to answer many questions.

"The scope of the study and its duration create many possibilities," he said. "As we get further into the study, the value of its finding will become more clear."

The full study hasn't yet started and is still in the development stages; the 200 Benton County participants are part of the Vanguard Study. This is a pilot program with about 5,000 children enrolled in 40 locations nationwide.

The National Academy of Sciences recently released a report raising concerns about the design, management and oversight of the main study and called for a re-examination of its methodology and feasibility. The academy formed a special committee to analyze and evaluate plans and is set to present a final report in December.

The Vanguard sites are serving as test locations for various ways of running the long-term study, such as recruitment, retention and data collection.

Sherry Lloyd, community outreach and engagement manager for the National Children's Study South Region, said data collection vans are among the things being tested in the region's 10 study locations.

The Benton County van arrived two weeks ago and should make interaction with research families easier and less disruptive, she said.

The visits through the children's first three years have been short and typically done in the participants' homes, which could be distracting and stressful for the mothers, Lloyd said.

"The van allows us to go wherever the participants would like to meet and be hassle-free," she said. "We will go where these people live, learn and play."

The Benton County Children's Study doesn't have a brick-and-mortar location, so the van doubles has a mobile office for its two local employees: Gwen Wiley and Julie Filmer. Both women are data collectors. Wiley does the field interviews, and Filmer is a phlebomotist.

The appointment after the child turns 3 years old includes collecting blood, urine and saliva samples from both the mother and the child. Everything can be done in the van, and freezers in the mobile work space preserve the samples at the proper temperature until they are shipped to a collection facility in Maryland.

The van is a 2014 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter 3500 and was specially designed for the National Children's Study. It has room for the one-on-one interviews and cognitive testing as well as a small restroom.

Filmer said magnets attached to the van bearing the National Children's Study logo can be removed if a participants would prefer an unmarked van to come to their homes.

Wiley said they met with a handful of participants since receiving the van and is in the process of lining up more visits. Appointments are running about three hours.

"Time is money in research and we are working on trimming our appointment time," she said.

Families aren't paid for enrolling in the study, but Lloyd said they are offering up to $75 in gift cards to people taking part in the current round of interviews.

The study isn't accepting any new families and participants were recruited through area doctor's offices either during or before a pregnancy.

Lloyd said the next big step will be when they start collecting environmental samples from study subjects' homes to test things such as air and water. She expects those collections to start next year after they gain federal approval. The study's lead organization is the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

One of the biggest challenges in the long-term study is keeping families interested and staying in contact with them.

"We have quite a mobile population," she said. "People move, people change phone numbers and they don't always think to let us know."

Wiley said they are searching for 13 babies whose families have moved.

"Overall, our participants are very invested in this study," Wiley said.

NW News on 09/27/2014

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