NIH has awarded Avera’s Research’s https://www.avera.org Institute’s Center for Pediatric and Community Research, a $17.1 million grant program to continue to work on the “Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes” (ECHO) Study http://echochildren.org.
Avera is one of 35 cohorts chosen to participate in ECHO. The goal is to improve child and adolescent health by looking at how a broad range of environmental influences such as sleep, nutrition, allergens, genetic influences, and social relationships can affect children both prenatally and after birth,
The grant’s total presented over five years is the largest health research funding award in South Dakota’s history. The funding will help Avera Research Institute implement their portion of the ECHO project which has been under development and planning for two years. Avera will also be partnering with Columbia University and the University of Maryland on the project.
ECHO uses information from existing projects and will include information on more than 50,000 children from diverse backgrounds in the U.S. Avera researchers will follow participants from before birth through childhood and adolescence.
Participants in the Avera’s Center for Pediatric and Community Research’s Safe Passage study as well as new participants from the areas near Rapid City and Sioux Falls are going to take part in the study.