U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) today helped launch a new Congressional working group which aims to help Congress get an early jump on understanding the long-term health needs of children by advocating for and promoting the landmark National Children’s Study (NCS) on Capitol Hill.

    The Congressional Children’s Study Working Group—which Smith and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) are co-chairing—is a bipartisan group of legislators who seek to educate their colleagues on the importance of the NCS and why the study must receive Congressional support. The working group was announced today at a briefing on Capitol Hill where Dr. Duane Alexander, Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, joined Smith and Matsui to brief Congressional staff on the NCS.

    “Data drives policy, which is the precise reason we established the National Children’s Study in 2000. This groundbreaking study is a first critical step towards identifying, promoting and implementing reforms needed to improve the health and well being of America’s children,” Smith said upon announcement of the working group. “Our bipartisan Congressional Children’s Study Working Group will focus attention and amplify the findings and recommendations of the National Children’s Study so that policy changes are made and our children are better protected from dangerous environmental and health risks.” 

    The NCS—established by a provision in the Children’s Health Act (PL 106-310)—is the largest long-term study of environmental and genetic effects on children’s health ever conducted in the United States. By following 100,000 children from before birth to age 21, study researchers hope to better understand how a child’s genes and environmental exposure factors—including air, water, diets and medical visits—interact to affect their health and development. Premature birth, asthma, diabetes, childhood obesity and developmental disabilities such as autism are among the diseases and conditions included within the scope of the NCS.

    Smith said he hopes the NCS will finally shine a light on the causes of a number of childhood diseases and conditions, including autism, for which the prevalence numbers are astonishingly high in the United States.

    “In 1998, the Gallagher’s of Brick came to me with concerns of an elevated level of autism cases in their community. At the time, there was little in the way of documented evidence of the prevalence and causes of autism. We now know that 1 in 150 born in the U.S. and 1 in every 94 born in New Jersey suffers from an autism spectrum disorder. What we still don’t know—and the mystery the National Children’s Study aims to solve—is why these numbers are so extraordinarily high. Studying genetic and environmental factors of children—from their time in the womb until they reach adulthood—is our best opportunity to learn the root causes of autism and other childhood afflictions,” said Smith, who serves as co-chair of several health-related House caucus including the Congressional Coalition on Autism Research and Care and the Congressional Lyme Disease Caucus.

    The announcement of the Congressional Children’s Study Working Group was tied to the announcement of twenty-two new study centers to manage participant recruitment and data collection. These twenty-two centers join the first seven centers—known as Vanguard Centers—bringing the total to twenty-nine centers across the US that are now participating in the study.

    More communities are slated to receive study centers in the coming years. Among those are four New Jersey counties, including Burlington County, a portion of which is in Smith’s Congressional district.

    Smith said that one goal of the working group will be to educate Members of Congress on why it is crucial that the NCS continues to receive full funding through the life of the study.

    “The National Children’s Study is the largest and longest children’s health study ever undertaken and, as such, our long-term commitments to the study must be met. We will use this working group as vehicle to promote the study’s work and push for continued funding for it. To cut funding and eliminate this historic undertaking just as it gets off the ground would be a death-blow to researchers on the cusp of major breakthroughs in our understanding of these diseases and afflictions,” Smith said.