The NJKS is a New Jersey-wide initiative that will follow a diverse cohort of pregnant women throughout pregnancy and their babies from birth for many years. This important collaborative effort will assess the determinants of children’s health, growth, and development, including the roles of genetics, the microbiome, the environment, and social factors. The results of this study will be an important step to understand and address outcomes and disparities in maternal and child health across the state of New Jersey.
Specific Aims of the NJKS:
- Recruit a diverse cohort of pregnant women from obstetric clinics across New Jersey.
- Follow parents and their children over time, obtaining surveys, clinical data, health assessments, and biospecimens that will enable researchers to determine how the microbiome and many other factors shape infant and child health, growth, and development.
- Use the NJKS as a platform to facilitate research on high priority questions about maternal and child health.
- Serve as a vehicle for training the next generation of translational scientists in building and studying birth cohorts.