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Funding will advance research on children’s health using data from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program
Helen Chin, an assistant professor in Global and Community Health, received a new grant from the National Institutes of Health’s ECHO Opportunities and Innovation Fund to study the impacts of air pollution exposure on child development.
Chin’s work will focus on how exposure to air pollutants before birth and as infants—key developmental periods—might relate to the timing of puberty in children. It will also examine the role childhood body mass index (BMI) may contribute.
“There are growing concerns about how puberty is starting earlier in children and the impacts this might have on childhood and long-term health,” says Chin. She received the grant in November 2024.
The ECHO Opportunities and Innovation Fund is an NIH-funded grant mechanism to support early career investigators who propose projects that introduce new research, tools, and technologies in the ECHO Program. Chin will collaborate with Global and Community Health Professor Michael Bloom and researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina ECHO site.
Chin is a recognized expert in reproductive epidemiology and environmental factors that can negatively impact reproductive health. Her work on exposure to environmental endocrine disruptors and reproductive outcomes has earned several awards for research excellence.
ECHO is a national collaborative consortium funded by the NIH that supports long-term research on pediatric health with its mission “to enhance the health of children for generations to come.” It brings diverse participant populations from across the country together to standardize and pool data on a large scale that can then support research at a broader and more nuanced level than individual smaller studies ever could.
Chin’s award adds to the $1.78 million in annual ECHO funding awarded to the College since January of 2020, adding to George Mason’s on-going leadership, innovation, and successful relationships with its participants. George Mason’s School of Nursing has been a collection site for ECHO since 2020.
ECHO data have already informed research that examines toxic metal buildup in mothers, how school lunches impact obesity in children, and the disparities in sleep patterns in children of different races and ethnicities.