USF Will Track 2,000 Children

The University of South Florida received $29 million to follow 2,000 children from birth till age 21 and spot what may trigger health disorders and diseases, public health experts said Friday.

The effort is part of a nationwide study bankrolled by the National Institutes of Health, whose lead researchers are calling this the largest study of pregnant women ever conducted.

USF researchers, under the supervision of the University of Miami, will follow 1,000 children in Hillsborough County and 1,000 in Orange County, said Kathleen O'Rourke, a professor of epidemiology at USF who's leading the local effort.

In about two years, scientists will start going door-to-door in a dozen Hillsborough neighborhoods to recruit pregnant women, women trying to become pregnant or even those who don't plan to have children soon.

Their sweeping project will have researchers studying everything from blood and urine samples of parents and their children to the dust that settles in their homes - anything in the environment that may trigger ailments that range from autism to obesity.

"We're going to have answers to questions that we've been asking but haven't had enough power to do," O'Rourke said.

That power comes with money - $28.8 million for USF alone for the next five years.

Nationwide, researchers plan to enroll 100,000 mothers from all racial groups and income levels for a representative sample of the United States and anticipate spending $3.2 billion in the process.

"In its scope and in its focus ... the National Children's Study is unique," said Duane Alexander, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "There is no other American study quite like it."

In all, researchers in Florida will follow 3,600 children in Hillsborough, Orange, Baker and Miami-Dade counties, all under the direction of the University of Miami.

The study is concerned mostly with what leads to autism, obesity, injury, diabetes, asthma, cerebral palsy, birth defects and schizophrenia.

Researchers will study a child's social environment as well. For instance, whether a child obese because he sits at home and watches TV, or if that child sitting at home because his neighborhood is unsafe, O'Rourke said.

O'Rourke and her team haven't picked the neighborhoods they'll recruit from, but they plan to develop a representative sample of Hillsborough County - from the inner city of Tampa to the gated communities of its suburbs.