Linking environment data with birth cohorts
One of our first priorities will be to link CANUE data to the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study cohort. We will standardize and temporally-adjust environmental metrics for as many variables as possible. This will achieve the most precise estimates of time-specific and cumulative exposure ever developed. Our efforts will provide an unprecedented opportunity to define critical windows of exposure in fetal and infant development.
Assessing physical activity
Children in several of the birth cohorts that CANUE members represent are now reaching school age and puberty – critical ages for evaluating physical activity. CANUE members are designing a study in which parents and children report their physical activity by standardized questionnaire as well as using accelerometers, the gold standard for measuring physical activity. Key neighbourhood metrics for studying physical activity will be provided by our Neighbourhood Factors Data Team (e.g., walkability).
A strategy for combined analysis
The Maternal Infant Child Youth Research Network (MICYRN) includes 20 maternal and child health research organizations across Canada. We will work with MICYRN to identify opportunities to add environmental data to the existing health databases and develop a strategy for combined analysis. Our focus will be interactions between greenness, air pollution, and physical activity (e.g., walkability), and the impacts on multiple outcomes. This will support new studies such as a national analysis linking geographic and time-specific NO2 exposure during pregnancy to neonatal and infant health outcomes such as birth weight and allergy in the first year of life.