UH medical school part of $150 million NIH award for childhood health

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Tina Shelton, (808) 554-2586
Director of Communications, Office of Dean of Medicine
Posted: Sep 23, 2016

UH Family Medicine Resident Kelly Makino, MD, examines a child at Mililani Physician Center.
UH Family Medicine Resident Kelly Makino, MD, examines a child at Mililani Physician Center.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced $157 million in awards in fiscal year 2016 to launch a seven-year initiative called Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO). The ECHO program will investigate how exposure to a range of environmental factors in early development – from conception through early childhood – influences the health of children and adolescents. 

Children in Hawaiʻi will directly benefit from this major initiative, because UH Mānoa has been selected to build state-of-the art pediatric clinical research networks in rural and medically underserved areas, so that children from these communities can participate in clinical trials. The medical school will partner with the Hawaiʻi Pacific Health Research Institute and Kapiʻolani Medical Center for Women and Children and UH professor and community pediatrician Dr. May Okihiro of the Waiʻanae Coast Comprehensive Health Center.

“We think this is going to transform the availability of clinical trials to benefit infants, children and adolescents with the most need in Hawaiʻi,” said Principal Investigator Bruce Shiramizu, MD, and Professor of Pediatrics, UH Mānoa, John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM).

Initially, three main areas of emphasis for the Hawaiʻi site will be the health of infants before and after birth, obesity in children and adolescents, and respiratory diseases, including asthma suffered by children and teens. Future plans include clinical trials involving neurocognition. These four areas are the initial key focus areas for ECHO. University physicians in the JABSOM Department of Pediatrics, assisted by those in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women’s Health, will collaborate with their peers on a national level to develop new clinical trials that will involve the children of Hawaiʻi. The first of the clinical trials could happen within a year of the four-year grant awarded this week.

When they begin, the clinical trials will be open to children and adolescents in Hawai’i who are at the greatest risk for health problems: Native Hawaiians, part-Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, Filipinos and other Asians, as well as children and teens of low-income families and underserved communities. Few clinical trials in the past have targeted children from these ethnic backgrounds or islands.

Experiences during sensitive developmental windows, including around the time of conception, later in pregnancy, and during infancy and early childhood, can have long-lasting effects on the health of children. These experiences encompass a broad range of exposures, from air pollution and chemicals in our neighborhoods, to societal factors such as stress, to individual behaviors like sleep and diet. They may act through any number of biological processes, for example, changes in the expression of genes or development of the immune system.

A critical component of ECHO will be to use the NIH-funded Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) program (the Hawai’i IdeA Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Clinical Trials) to build state-of-the art pediatric clinical research networks in rural and medically underserved areas, so that children from these communities can participate in clinical trials.

UH JABSOM Grant Number: 1UG1HD090879-01

About the John A. Burns School of Medicine

The John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) at the University of Hawaiʻi honors its unique research environment to excel in science-based efforts to eliminate diseases that disproportionately affect people in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region. Annually at JABSOM, more than 600 future physicians are learning medicine JABSOM, researchers bring in over $52 million in grants, and overall economic stimulus from the school tops $456 million. JABSOM also grants degrees in Clinical Translational Research, Communication Sciences & Disorders, Tropical Medicine/Infectious Diseases, Cell and Molecular Biology, Medical Technology and Developmental and Reproductive Biology. http://jabsom.hawaii.edu

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. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.govNIH…Turning Discovery Into Health®