Eskenazi Brenda, Gladstone Eleanor A, Berkowitz Gertrud S, Drew Christina H, Faustman Elaine M, Holland Nina T, Lanphear Bruce, Meisel Stefanie J, Perera Frederica P, Rauh Virginia A, Sweeney Anne, Whyatt Robin M, Yolton Kimberly
Center for Children's Environmental Health Research, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2005 Oct;113(10):1419-29. doi: 10.1289/ehp.7670.
In anticipation of the National Children's Study, lessons can be learned from the smaller birth cohort studies conducted by five Centers for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The populations studied are diverse in ethnicity and social class and reside in urban and rural environments. Although almost all of the centers chose to enroll participants through medical care facilities, they had to develop independent staffs and structures because of the overburdened medical care system. Some of the lessons learned by the centers include the importance of continuous funding, building community partnerships to conduct culturally appropriate research, hiring bilingual and bicultural staff from the community, prioritizing research goals, developing biorepositories to ensure future utility of samples, instituting quality control procedures for all aspects of specimen and data collection, maintaining frequent contact with study participants, ensuring ethical conduct of the research in a changing medical-legal climate, and communicating results in a timely and appropriate manner to participants and the wider community. All centers underestimated the necessary start-up time, staff, and costs in conducting these birth cohort studies. Despite the logistical complexity and added expenses, all centers emphasize the importance of studying the impact of environmental exposures on those children most at risk, those living in minority and low-income communities. These centers present barriers encountered, solutions found, and considerations for future research, with the hope that the lessons learned can help inform the planning and conduct of the National Children's Study.
在筹备全国儿童研究时，可以从由美国国立环境卫生科学研究所和美国环境保护局资助的五个儿童环境卫生与疾病预防研究中心开展的规模较小的出生队列研究中汲取经验教训。所研究的人群在种族和社会阶层方面具有多样性，居住在城市和农村环境中。尽管几乎所有中心都选择通过医疗保健机构招募参与者，但由于医疗保健系统负担过重，它们不得不建立独立的工作人员队伍和架构。这些中心汲取的一些经验教训包括持续资金的重要性、建立社区伙伴关系以开展符合文化背景的研究、从社区招聘双语和双文化工作人员、确定研究目标的优先级、建立生物样本库以确保样本的未来效用、为样本和数据收集的各个方面制定质量控制程序、与研究参与者保持频繁联系、在不断变化的医疗法律环境中确保研究的道德 conduct、以及及时且适当地向参与者和更广泛的社区传达研究结果。所有中心都低估了开展这些出生队列研究所需的启动时间、工作人员和成本。尽管后勤工作复杂且费用增加，但所有中心都强调研究环境暴露对那些最易受影响的儿童，即生活在少数族裔和低收入社区的儿童的影响的重要性。这些中心介绍了遇到的障碍、找到的解决方案以及对未来研究的考虑，希望所汲取的经验教训能够为全国儿童研究的规划和实施提供参考。
