Rockville, Maryland (PRWEB) October 02, 2015 -- The National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIEHS) recently awarded Westat a cooperative agreement, one of multiple grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) this year. Westat’s role will be to act as the Coordinating Center for the Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource, which will provide the NIH-funded research community access to laboratory and statistical analyses to add or expand environmental exposures as a component of their research.
“Technology advances have become a powerful driver in studying and understanding the start and spread of disease,” said NIH Director, Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. “These projects will expand the toolbox available to researchers to improve our ability to characterize environmental exposures, understand how environmental exposures affect in utero development and function, and bolster the infrastructure for exposure research.”
Environmental exposures, which range from chemical and biological factors such as air pollution, pesticides and infectious diseases, to psychosocial factors such as education, stress and neglect, are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality for mothers and children worldwide. This work will enhance the next phase of research on the effects of environmental exposures on child health and development.
About Westat: Westat is one of the leading research and statistical survey organizations in the United States. Since 1963, Westat has provided statistical and evaluation research services to Federal and state government agencies and other organizations in the fields of health, education, social services, transportation, housing, the environment, and other subjects. For more information about Westat, visit http://www.westat.com.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. The research announced in this release is supported by NIH/NIEHS (award #U24ES026539). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of NIH. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov.
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Patricia Espey-English, VP Marketing, Westat, http://www.westat.com, +1 (301) 294-2836, [email protected]
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