Young Arkansans will get cutting-edge medical treatment as part of a national study on the health of children in pockets of rural America, with the state's medical school overseeing research across the country.
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and the research wing of Arkansas Children's Hospital will share in federal funds to use clinical trials to monitor the link between environmental factors -- such as pollution and sleep patterns -- and childhood development, the National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday.
The seven-year, $157 million federal initiative will grant $41.8 million to UAMS to oversee 17 sites across the country at which the clinical trials will be carried out.
One of those sites is the Arkansas Children's Research Institute in Little Rock, which will get $1.9 million to connect rural children, who doctors say can be overlooked in national studies, to trials that are expected to begin in the first half of next year.
Although exact figures are unknown, at least several hundred and potentially close to 3,000 children in Arkansas could be included in the treatment, said Gregory Kearns and Lauren James, the doctors who will co-lead trials at the Children's Research Institute.
Overall, the Institutes of Health expects to enroll more than 50,000 children in an initiative examining how environmental factors at the time of early development -- starting at conception -- affect the health of young children and adolescents.
The program is designed to give participating children easier access to new drugs and medical treatment that often eludes them, and to collect data to better understand how factors like pollution, stress, nutrition and sleep patterns contribute to health.
The studies will specifically monitor health conditions involving weight, brain function and respiratory and nervous systems.
"The importance of this funding is it really has a lifespan impact," said James, who's also the UAMS associate vice chancellor for clinical and translational research. "The healthier you are as a child, that's going to impact your long-term productivity and the health issues you face down the road."
The medical school is the initiative's only data coordination and operations center. It is responsible for setting uniform standards, training participating doctors and collecting data, including bio-specimens, said Dr. Jeanette Lee, a UAMS professor of biostatistics and one of two project leaders on the medical school's side.
"We sort of serve as the nerve center," Lee said.
Lee said she also hopes to collect environmental samples from the children's surroundings.
One of UAMS' first steps will be to get a better idea of the patient population surrounding each trial site in order to better coordinate who should study what -- for example, Arkansas could be flagged for a high concentration of obesity and asthma problems, James said.
Participating doctors will convene in November in Washington, D.C., to talk through which studies need to be conducted and where, James said. Trials could start as early as spring 2017, Kearns said.
The 16 other states where trials will be conducted include Hawaii and Alaska and stretch as far as New Hampshire in the Northeast and New Mexico in the Southwest.
The Institutes of Health, the federal medical research agency, spends more than $32 billion per year. It consists of 27 institutes and centers focused on cancer, aging, diabetes, drug abuse, allergies and a variety of other specialties.
Arkansas' large role in the Institutes of Health program -- being the site of trials and the data center -- will affect Arkansans, Lee said.
"We will also have an opportunity to have something to say on how these trials are implemented, especially because the populations we have are not easy to reach," Lee said. "We will be able to shape some of the research to make it easier for our individuals to participate and try to lessen the burden on the parents to participate."
Although the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes initiative will span seven years, the trials are scheduled to last four years. Kearns said he expects Children's Hospital to manage between 40 and 60 trials over that span.
They'll be conducted in central Arkansas but will not be limited to that population. The Children's Research Institute is partnering with the medical school's Northwest Arkansas campus to specifically reach the Marshallese and other Pacific Islander residents, who should be included in the trials, James said.
"We know that is a group that is a fairly large group in the state of Arkansas where there are a lot of health care disparities," James said. "We want to make sure we understand what is unique about the Marshallese population that makes them more susceptible to disease."
Metro on 09/22/2016