National Children's Study Video

Transcript: National Children's Study

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National Children's Study

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Child 1: When I grow up, I want to be a singer.

Child 2: When I grow up, I want to be a dentist.

Narrator: Every child grows up with dreams of the future; their own, their parents, their family.

Child 3: I can't remember what?

Child 4: I want to be a mechanical engineer.

Child 5: Una doctora.

Narrator: And every one of those dreams starts with being healthy.

Child 6: When I get bigger, I'm going to be a professional piano player.

Narrator: There's nothing more fundamental.

Child 7: I want to be a baseball player.

Child 8: I'm going to be a ferryboat captain.

Child 9: I think I'll be an elementary school teacher or maybe a Nurse Practitioner.

Parent 1: I want her to be strong.

Parent 2: I want him to be safe.

Parent 3: I just want him to be healthy.

Parent 4: I want him to be happy.

Parent 5: I just want to help her follow her dreams.

Duane Alexander, MD: Every American parent wants the very best for their children. They want them to grow up healthy, exposed to the best education that they can get so that they have the optimum chance to reach adulthood free of diseases and disability and able to achieve their full potential.

Narrator: That's why hundreds of thousands of Americans, children and their families, will be joining forces, coming together to participate in the National Children's Study.

Edward B. Clark, MD: The National Children's Study is the largest, boldest, and most innovative study of children's health and disease ever done.

Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD: It will be a representation of the nation's children, which means that it will include children from all socioeconomic groups, and children from all races and ethnic groups.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: The national children's study is a study of 100,000 children and to try to understand the role of environment in child health and disease.

Narrator: This landmark health effort, the largest and most comprehensive health study of children ever will enrich the future with invaluable medical knowledge, helping generations of American children lead healthier lives.

Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD: I see this as the first opportunity for our nation's children to get their fair due.

Duane Alexander, MD: It will involve 100,000 children and families over the course of 21 years.

Tina Cheng, MD: Those 100,000 children will represent 100,000 mothers, and a 100,000 fathers and aunts and uncles in communities scattered all across the United States. And from this, we'll learn very important lessons about health and about disease.

Peter C. Scheidt, MD: National Children's Study will focus on just how environmental exposures interact with the genetic information to either result in or prevent healthy and productive children.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: We have ongoing epidemics of certain childhood diseases, for example, asthma.

Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD: And for mortality.

Tina Cheng, MD: For obesity.

Edward B. Clark, MD: Diabetes.

Fernando Guerra, MD: Any number of risk-taking behaviors.

Michael Shannon, MD: Autism.

Peter C. Scheidt, MD: Learning disabilities.

Edward B. Clark, MD: Cardiovascular disease.

Peter C. Scheidt, MD: And even injuries.

Fernando Guerra, MD: Increase that we're seeing in diabetes type II, which we didn't see 10 or 15 years ago.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: A number of diseases, which are new diseases for us. They weren't around 30, 40 years ago to the degree that they are now.

Loretta Jones, MA: There might be some trends that are going on now that we can counteract.

Edward B. Clark, MD: Each one of us who is a health care professional, particularly a children's healthcare professional, has seen this shift in children's health over the last decades, and we stop and pause and say, "Why?"

Loretta Jones, MA: The study was conceived to look at child development from preconception all the way through until they are 21 years old. We have not ever done this.

Fernando Guerra, MD: It will give us information and evidence that will provide better explanations and understanding for so many conditions that today are affecting not just an individual or groups of individuals, but entire populations.

Duane Alexander, MD: The National Children's Study is our effort to understand one of the great mysteries in pediatrics today. What role does the environment play in causing diseases that we don't know the cause of otherwise?

Loretta Jones, MA: It goes from environmental to social to physical.

Tina Cheng, MD: Their prenatal environment.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: The food you eat.

Edward B. Clark, MD: The water that we drink.

Fernando Guerra, MD: The quality of the air that we breathe.

Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD: The soil that the child plays in.

Duane Alexander, MD: We have new tools for measuring the environment. We have the capability of looking at DNA now in relationship to the environment from the human genome project. We have the computer and data management capabilities that allow us to put all this together for the very first time.

Edward B. Clark, MD: And all at the same time we're pledging in return to maintain the confidentiality of this information.

Narrator: Getting those kinds of answers won't be quick, but it's already under way. Researchers are talking to hundreds of thousands of Americans, inviting them and their babies to take part. Each child will be enrolled at birth and followed for 21 years.

Yvonne T. Maddox, PhD: We are asking individuals to participate in the study as volunteers.

Loretta Jones, MA: All of us love children. All of us want a healthy society, And I think that's one of the reasons why a young woman would want to be a part of it.

Michael Shannon, MD: A father should want involved in this study just as much as a mother because the two of them are going to have a child, and both of them equally want nothing more than for that child to have a healthy life and to become a healthy adult.

Phyllis Pettit Nassi, MSW: It's one of the greatest opportunities I think to participate in a study that involves future generations.

Loretta Jones, MA: As a participant, they're going to tell you a lot about the study. You can talk it over with your family members so that everybody knows what this is going to be like. And then they're going to besome screening things that they're going to do. There's going to be some questionnaires. Some of it will be done over the phone. And some of it will be done in home visits.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: It's an opportunity for our family to really make a significant contribution to understanding the health and disease of children in the United States. It's a way to really give back to society, if you will, or contribute to society in a very meaningful and tangible way.

Tina Cheng, MD: A child's health is very much dependent, not only on the child's social and physical environment, but also on how genetics and the environment interact. We're going to learn a lot from the National Children's Study.

Unknown Speaker: This is a critically important study at the right time with the right people doing it.

Phyllis Pettit Nassi, MSW: It's a great opportunity to participate in something that's going to make a huge difference.

Donald J. Dudley, MD: I fully expect that in the future people will look back on this, and they'll say, "My kid was in the National Children's Study." And that will be a point of pride for that family.

Loretta Jones, MA: This is not just about a research study. It's about our community. It's about our lives. It's about our families. About our children.

Parent 6: I'd want to be in the National Children's Study to learn why kids have allergies.

Parent 4: Why do they have asthma?

Parent 7: Are overweight?

Parent 1: To learn more about our health.

Parent 7: Our environment.

Parent 2: Because we need for answers about children's health.

Parent 6: For our kids.

Child 7: For everybody's kids.

Parent 8: I'd want to be in the National Children's Study because it's important.

Parent 9: Because it's important to me.

Parent 10: It's time.

Parent 11: It's time.

Child 8: It's time

Parent 7: It's never been done before.

Parent 1: It's something I can do for America.

Parent 6: For my children's children.

Child 9: Because when I grow up

Child 2: When I grow up

Child 4: When I grow up, I just want to be healthy.

Child 10: When I grow up, I want to be a horseback rider.

Child 11: I want to fly airplanes.

Child 3: I want to work for the CIA and be a spy.

Child 12: I want to be a TV reporter.

Parent 12: We just want our kids to grow up healthy.

Child 13: When I grow up, I'm not sure what I'm going to be, but it's going to be fun.