Washington, DC and Queens, NY -- At the National Press Club today, Surgeon General Richard Carmona and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Director Duane Alexander announced that the borough of Queens will be one of the first sites for piloting and conducting the National Children's Study, the largest, most comprehensive, long-term study of environmental effects on human development conducted to date. A consortium of healthcare providers led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine will conduct the research.

More than 100,000 children across the United States will participate in the National Children's Study, as researchers will follow children from before birth until age 21. Study scientists will examine family genetics, neighborhoods and schools, chemical exposures, food and water, as well as children's social and behavioral environments. The Queens Vanguard Center will be led by the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment, our nation's first academic research and policy center to examine the links between exposure to toxic pollutants and childhood illness.

"When completed, the National Children's Study will be the richest information resource for questions related to child health that this country has ever seen." said Philip Landrigan, MD, Director of the Queens Vanguard Center and the Mount Sinai Center for Children's Health and the Environment and Chairman of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Conducting this study in Queens, the most ethnically diverse county in the nation, will provide a diverse population essential to ensuring that results are widely applicable."

Joining in the Queens Vanguard Center effort are researchers from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Dentistry of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

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Contact: The Mount Sinai Press Office
newsmedia@mssm.edu
212-241-9200
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
29-Sep-2005

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