With help from you, the CHILD Study will help kids live healthier lives
CHILD has been tremendously successful, and the results are painting a picture that says pregnancy and early-life events are critical to long-term health.
None of it would be possible without donors. By supporting CHILD, you can have an enormous impact on the future of child health.
—Dr. Allan Becker, Manitoba Site Leader, CHILD Study
Breakthrough CHILD Study findings have already shown that the first 100 days of life are critical to determining risk for allergy and asthma.
“We believe these early days may also be critically important in shaping how your immune system develops towards all sorts of chronic illnesses throughout your lifetime,” says Dr. Allan Becker, a pediatric allergist and professor of medicine at the University of Manitoba who is leader for the Manitoba site of the CHILD Study.
Beyond five years of age
To determine the longer-term impacts of the first 100 days of life, CHILD researchers hope to follow their subjects beyond their first five years of life—the original scope of the study. This will require additional funding.
“We hope to keep the CHILD Study alive for another decade,” notes Dr. Becker, “at which point it will be so invaluable that even the provincial and federal governments will recognize that they need to keep the study going. We’ve got to find the money to follow our kids into young adulthood.”
Beyond allergy and asthma
Although the study’s main focus was originally allergy and asthma, the data and biological samples collected offer researchers the opportunity to investigate the onset of many other chronic diseases, and to further explore how early life events critically shape our immune system.
As they follow study participants beyond their fifth birthday, the CHILD Study team envisions expanding its research foci beyond asthma and allergic disease, so that the Study evolves into a platform for researching the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) for Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), including cardiovascular and metabolic diseases and mental health.
Toward a healthier future
“The goal is prevention,” says Dr. Becker. “We really need to know what it is about our environment, broadly speaking, that’s driving the recent explosion of allergy, asthma and other chronic illnesses. The goal is both personalized prevention, and promotion of health at a community level. We believe the CHILD Study will provide much-needed answers.”
Your donation will help CHILD to continue and fulfill its promise to prevent chronic disease in future generations.