Northwell’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center Secures $40M in NIH Grants to Advance Research

Two grants will fund studies exploring how environmental social and chemical exposures impact child health and development

NEW HYDE PARK, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Northwell’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center and faculty from both the Departments of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology have been awarded two grants totaling $40.5 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). These grants, both part of the NIH’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, enable researchers to delve deeper into how environmental social and chemical exposures impact prenatal through early childhood health and development. Both studies are led by Annemarie Stroustrup Smith, MD, MPH, senior vice president of pediatrics at Cohen Children’s and chair of the department of pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell.

“These grants underscore the critical need to understand how early life experiences and environment even before birth, shape a child’s health trajectory,” said Dr. Stroustrup, who is also a professor in Northwell’s Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. “By engaging families in observational research and leveraging advanced statistical methods, we aim to uncover actionable insights to prevent chronic conditions like childhood obesity and asthma.”

The first grant provides $35.4 million to recruit 400 pregnant individuals, their partners, and children across southern New York State annually. This prospective birth cohort will investigate the impact of community and family factors on childhood growth trajectories and obesity risk.

The second grant, totaling $5.1 million, builds upon the ongoing Developmental Impact of NICU Exposures (DINE) cohort initiated in 2011 and continued at five academic medical centers: Northwell, Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center (OH), Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (N.C.), Vanderbilt University Medical Center (TN), and Hackensack-Meridian Health (N.J.). Renewed funding enables continued study of the unique vulnerability of preterm infants to environmental exposures like phthalates and air pollution, focusing on long-term pulmonary development. Preterm infants, a highly sensitive population, experience a high burden of adverse health outcomes, allowing identification of subtle exposure-outcome links that may be less apparent in the general population.

The ECHO program is a nationwide research initiative designed to understand the early environmental exposures that influence child health and development. By participating in the ECHO consortium, Cohen Children’s and the Feinstein Institutes contribute significantly to this national effort, providing crucial data that will help shape public health strategies for future generations.

In July, Dr. Stroustrup was named senior vice president of the pediatrics service line and chair of the department of pediatrics at Cohen Children’s. She joined Northwell in 2020 and has served as vice president and director of neonatal services, as well as the health system’s chief of neonatology.

About the Feinstein Institutes
The Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research is the home of the research institutes of Northwell Health, the largest health care provider and private employer in New York State. Encompassing 50+ research labs, 3,000 clinical research studies and 5,000 researchers and staff, the Feinstein Institutes raises the standard of medical innovation through its six institutes of behavioral science, bioelectronic medicine, cancer, health system science, molecular medicine, and translational research. We are the global scientific leader in bioelectronic medicine – an innovative field of science that has the potential to revolutionize medicine. The Feinstein Institutes publishes two open-access, international peer-reviewed journals Molecular Medicine and Bioelectronic Medicine. Through the Elmezzi Graduate School of Molecular Medicine, we offer an accelerated PhD program. For more information about how we produce knowledge to cure disease, visit http://feinstein.northwell.edu and follow us on LinkedIn.

About Northwell Health
Northwell is the largest not-for-profit health system in the Northeast, serving residents of New York and Connecticut with 28 hospitals, more than 1,000 outpatient facilities, 22,000 nurses and over 20,000 physicians. Northwell cares for more than three million people annually in the New York metro area, including Long Island, the Hudson Valley, western Connecticut and beyond, thanks to philanthropic support from our communities. Northwell is New York State’s largest private employer with over 104,000 employees – including members of Northwell Health Physician Partners and Nuvance Health Medical Practices – who are working to change health care for the better. Northwell is making breakthroughs in medicine at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research. Northwell is training the next generation of medical professionals at the visionary Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell and the Hofstra Northwell School of Nursing and Physician Assistant Studies. For information on our more than 100 medical specialties, visit Northwell.edu and follow us @NorthwellHealth on Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn.