PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia are getting $50 million to partner on research into environmental effects on pregnancies.
Doctors have measured health status for a long time by looking into genetic factors and evaluating individual choices. Dr. Heather Burris, a pediatrics professor at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, says those include what people eat, how much they work out, and how much alcohol they may drink.
"While all of those things are certainly important, what we call the macro environment also really matters for health and I think only recently we've started to recognize its importance," Burris said.
Those factors include what's around us, like sun exposure, access to green spaces and poor air quality, which our region saw a lot of this summer.
“It was hard to ignore the air pollution threat that was coming when the wildfire smoke came down from Canada, but actually on any given day, we have fluctuations in air pollution that is below what we can detect as human beings, that can affect our health,” she said.
Burris is one of the leaders of the joint study, in which researchers hope to enroll 2,500 pregnant women. She is joined by Dr. Sara DeMauro, an associate professor at CHOP and Penn. They will keep monitoring the health of each child after they’re born through four years of age, in appointments with Children’s Hospital.
The $50 million grant for the research is part of a National Institutes of Health program called ECHO, or Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes.
"Working in collaboration with people who study children's health — and not just maternal health — will allow us to do the best job we can with the children as they age through the study,” said DeMauro. “We felt that the best way to follow children long-term throughout their childhood is with a large children's hospital with people who know how to take excellent care of children.”
Penn epidemiology professor Sunni Mumford, another project leader, says there are incentives for people to enroll in the study.
"The participants will be compensated for each visit that they come to and we're trying to get the word out through the prenatal care visits and through the local communities in any way we can,” she explained.
Researchers say if the project receives additional funding, they anticipate extending the study past four years old and throughout childhood.