October 22, 2008 - Northwestern Plans Largest Study on DuPage Kids’ Health
CHICAGO --- What are the most critical health problems of children in DuPage County, and how can these problems best be prevented or treated?
Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine will help answer these important questions with an historic federally-funded study that will follow 1,000 children in DuPage County from before birth to age 21.
The Feinberg School has received a five-year, $14.5 million contract from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the health of children in DuPage County. This planned study will be part of the National Children's Study, the largest study of child and human health ever conducted in the United States. Holl also will conduct the study in Cook and Will Counties.
"By better understanding the health of children in our communities, we can better understand how to improve their health and provide for their health care needs," said principal investigator Jane Holl, M.D., director of the Institute for Healthcare Studies at the Feinberg School.
"What we learn will not only help children and families in the area, but also children across the country," said Holl, who also is an associate professor of pediatrics, and of preventive medicine at Feinberg and an attending physician at Children's Memorial Hospital "We want people to understand why it's so important to participate."
The National Children's Study will assess a wide range of environmental and genetic factors on pregnant women, children and adults. Its goal is to prevent and treat some of the nation's most serious health problems including autism, birth defects, diabetes, heart disease and obesity.
"Many diseases that occur in adulthood have a beginning in childhood," said Holl. "We hope to show that we can prevent or decrease many diseases by understanding what leads to the disease and by intervening much earlier. "
Study researchers hope to examine such things as what children eat, the air they breathe, the water they drink, the safety of their neighborhoods, how they are cared for and how often they see a doctor. Researchers also plan to look at children's possible exposure to chemicals from materials used to construct their homes and schools.
Scientists also plan to analyze biological substances like blood, urine and hair from study participants to test for exposure to environmental factors and examine how these factors might influence their health.
The study centers were selected based on a strong ability to coordinate the collection of data for the study, build extensive community networks for recruiting eligible women and newborns and a capability to protect the privacy of the information collected on participants.
The national study plans to recruit more than 100,000 children representative of the entire population of American children
The CHIRAH - Chicago Initiative to Raise Asthma Health Equity - has been launched.
CHIRAH is collaborative effort including investigators at Cook County's John Stroger Hospital and at Northwestern University to better understand the causes and effects of asthma in Chicago. Their main activities have been a survey of 48,917 children in the Chicago Public Schools and the Archdiocese of Chicago; a longitudinal study of 914 adults and children in the city of Chicago; and a pilot intervention study located in the Austin neighborhood. Institute for Healthcare Studies staff members, Sarah Rittner and Chris Lyttle are both involved with CHIRAH. You can view the CHIRAH website here: http://chirah.cchil.org
Dr. Ruchi Gupta was recently interviewed by Chicago Tonight regarding Chicago Neighborhood Asthma Prevalence. You can watch her interview via Youtube.
Recent Grants / Awards- Charlesnika T. Evans, an epidemiologist and health services researcher from the Department of Veterans Affairs at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, has recently joined the Institute for Healthcare Studies as a Research Assistant Professor. Her top-rated fellowship grant entitled ‘Antibiotic prescribing for veterans with spinal cord injury and disorder (SCI&D) and clinician perceptions’ earned her the highly competitive 2008 Fritz Krauth Memorial Fellowship from the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Research Foundation. She is the first health services and VA researcher to receive this prestigious award.
November 27, 2008 - University Holiday. No Seminar Series.
December 4, 2008 - Stephen Persell, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Division of General Internal Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Institute for Healthcare Studies, Northwestern University. "Performance Measurement in Outpatient Care: Will Current Measures Yield the Desired Results? Can the Process Be Improved?”
December 11, 2008 - Daniel G. Morrow, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Institute of Aviation, Aviation Human Factors Division
December 18, 2008 - Quentin Young, MD, Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. "Health Care for All: The Quintessential Social Justice Challenge."
December 25, 2008 - University Holiday. No Seminar Series.
January 1, 2009 - University Holiday - No Seminar Series
January 8, 2009 - Richard Warnecke, PhD, Director, Center for Health Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago.
January 15, 2009 - Gordon Hazen, IEMS Department, Northwestern University. "Health Quality Theory and Applications"
January 22, 2009 - CORE Speaker Series
January 29, 2009 - Linda Emanuel, MD, PhD, Buehler Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Director of the Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine.
February 5, 2009 - Alan Schwartz, Associate Professor & Director of Research, Department of Medical Education, University of Illinois at Chicago.
February 12, 2009 - David C. Mohr, PhD, Northwestern University. "Effects of Stress on Multiple Scleroisis or Telemental Health (Use of Telecommunications Technology in Providing Mental Health Care)."
February 19, 2009 - Monica Vela, MD, Assistant Professor, Associate Vice Chair for Diversity, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago. "Health Disparities Cirriculum in the Medical Education of All Health Care Providers."
