Enriching the Rhode Island Child Health Study

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This U24 renewal is a cooperative agreement responsive to RFA-ES-22-001, “Maintaining and Enriching Environmental Epidemiology Cohorts to Support Scientific and Workforce Diversity.” Our overarching goal is to sustain, enrich and diversify resource infrastructure for the Rhode Island Children’s Health Study (RICHS; Marsit, Stroud MPI: R24ES028507) by facilitating future longitudinal follow-up, accelerating data man- agement and sharing, and diversifying the scientific workforce. RICHS was developed to characterize the impact of the environment on newborn and early childhood health outcomes with a novel and unique focus on the mechanistic role of placenta molecular function in mediating the impact of the chemical, physical, social, and behavioral environment on infant/child health and disease. The cohort is comprised of 840 mother-infant pairs from the Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts region enrolled using a population-based recruitment strategy. RICHS offspring at the start of this project range in age from 8.8-13.8 years—a critical period for envi- ronmental influences on development. Data and results from the cohort have made seminal contributions to elucidating (a) the fundamental molecular biology of the placenta, (b) the impact of environmental exposures on placental epigenetic and genomic regulation, (c) links between placental molecular variation and newborn growth and neurobehavioral outcomes, as well as (d) novel methods development. Resources/investigators from the RICHS cohort contributed to 75 publications (42 during the R24 period), 10 NIH grants including fellowship and career development awards for early career scientists, and >20 post/doctoral projects. The proposed U24 infra- structure support will facilitate prospective, longitudinal assessments of novel child health and disease outcomes, postnatal environmental exposures, structural and social determinants of health, as well as continued collection of biospecimens into the RICHS biorepository. The U24 will also support enrichment of data management and broad sharing of cohort resources, with all activities aimed at providing opportunities for a diverse cadre of sci- entists across career stages to access to data and biospecimens to develop novel research questions. Specifi- cally, the goals of this R24 infrastructure support project are to (1) support the infrastructure of diverse workforce of the cohort, (2) continue to obtain longitudinal data on mother-child pairs, (3) broaden the diversity of RICHS by facilitating enrollment of new participants from complementary Rhode Island cohorts, (4) refine and expand systems for broad sharing of cohort data and resources, (5) increase opportunities for scholars from historically under-represented groups to engage with the RICHS cohort, and (6) work with the consortium in developing integrated measures and common strategies for data sharing and collaboration. Ultimately, U24 infrastructure support will maximize NIEHS investment by increasing diversity of participants, workforce, and measures in this highly unique and productive cohort, accelerating discovery and catalyzing future transformative contributions to children’s environmental health.