Protecting Children’s Health for a Lifetime

For many reasons, children are likely to be more vulnerable than adults to the effects of environmental contaminants. To better understand the effects of these exposures on children's health, the EPA/NIEHS Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers ("Children's Centers") were established to explore ways to reduce children's health risks from environmental factors. The program is jointly funded by EPA through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) grants program, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) with additional expertise and low-cost laboratory services provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The long-range goals of the program include understanding how environmental factors affect children's health, and promoting translation of basic research findings into intervention and prevention methods to prevent adverse health outcomes. The program is designed to foster research collaborations among basic, clinical, and behavioral scientists with participation from local communities.

Emerging Areas of Research

The EPA/NIEHS Children’s Centers continue to make more contributions to the scientific understanding of complex interactions between the environment, genetics, and other factors and how those interactions affect children’s health from preconception to young adulthood. Emerging areas of research include:

• Obesity: What is the role of environmental factors in the epidemic of obesity among our nation’s children?
• Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals: How are widespread exposures to chemicals that interfere with the body’s hormones affecting children, particularly during vulnerable windows of development?
• Epigenetics: How do modifications to DNA resulting from diet, aging, stress, and/or environmental exposures affect our children or our grandchildren?