4. How long will the study last and why does it seem to have different phases?
Most of our financial support comes from grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and each grant lasts for no more than 5 years. So every few years we apply for a new round of funding.
Already we are learning a great deal from the information you and your child have provided, but sometimes the biggest rewards in studies like Viva come over the long term. After all, it took the famous Framingham Heart Study 13 years to find the first link between cholesterol levels and heart disease! This is why we plan on continuing Project Viva for as long as we are able to get funding. Your and your child's lasting participation is the key to our long-term success.
With our next round of funding, when your Viva child is at ages 5, 6, and 8 we'll mail you a questionnaire (not too long!) to fill out and mail back, just like we did at ages 1,2, and 4. At age 7 we will invite you and your child to participate in an in-person visit much like our 3-year-old visit.
7. Are you connected to the National Children's Study (NCS)?
We at Viva have been following the National Children's Study since it first started being planned, some 5 years ago. In fact, Dr. Gillman, Viva's principal investigator, co-chaired one of the working groups that helped put together the scientific hypotheses that will drive the design of the NCS. Many of these hypotheses have come from our Project Viva experience.
We have always felt that Viva, being 5-10 years ahead of the NCS, will be at the forefront of the science that the NCS can examine. Already we have pioneered some features (for example, diet assessment) that the NCS will probably use and many of the NCS individual sites may use Viva experience to determine how they follow the families.
9. Can I get my other kids involved in the study?
Unfortunately with our current study design we cannot enroll your other children into Project Viva. That's because some of Viva's main goals start with following your child even before birth! That's how we can learn things like how a woman's diet during pregnancy affects the health of her child, understand how stress in a woman's life influences her pregnancy, explore how infant nutrition shapes children's growth and development, and examine how pregnancy nutrition, stress and hormone levels influence the development of childhood obesity, asthma and allergies.
10. What happens with my information? How do you protect my confidentiality?
Federal privacy regulations provide safeguards for privacy, security, and authorized access. Your child's study results and your answers to questionnaires are kept strictly confidential. We use a number instead of names when we evaluate the information you give us. Information is stored in the investigator's file and identified by a study number only. The key that links your/your child's name and study number is kept in a separate, secure location. The risk of unauthorized access to the information provided is minimized by an individual password that is assigned only to authorized study personnel. We use only data looking at groups, not individuals, in publications or presentations of research results.
