MPH graduate to lead NIH initiative at VU to study ECHO
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently announced it will provide $157 million in awards to launch a multi-center, seven-year initiative that will investigate how exposure to environmental factors in early development — from conception through early childhood — influences the health of children and adolescents.
Vanderbilt is among a consortium of study centers involved in the initiative known as Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO), which will focus on four major health areas: asthma, neurodevelopment, obesity and perinatal outcomes.Tina Hartert, M.D, MPH, will serve as Vanderbilt’s principal investigator on the Children’s Respiratory Research and Environment Workgroup (CREW), a national consortium of asthma investigators that will study how genetics interact with environmental exposures during the prenatal and early childhood years to cause specific subtypes of childhood asthma and determine their distinct functional or biologic mechanism.