MANAGING BEST PRACTICES: The National Children's Study:
Do workplace environmental exposures affect the health of children? Over the next several years more than 50,000 pregnant workers, their partners, and the pregnant workers’ workplaces in 96 counties across the United States are expected to be monitored in the National Children’s Study (NCS) to help answer this question. Data from the NCS might eventually impact all employers through new prevention strategies, health and safety guidelines, and educational approaches to improving children’s health.
The lead agencies for the NCS include the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The initial study groups are pregnant women and their partners, couples planning pregnancy, and women who are of child-bearing age but who are not planning a pregnancy. The main subject of the study, however, is the “subsequent children.â€