Consultant, Child Health and Development Studies

Marj is consulting with a long-running research project, the Child Health and Development Studies (CHDS), to increase collaboration between the investigators and families who participate in the studies, and to gather advice from multiple stakeholders.  Over 40 years ago, 15,000 families in the Kaiser Permanente Health Plan joined the CHDS.  Today, families continue to participate in the CHDS, making it possible to learn how to prevent disease in children and adults of all ages, across generations. The mission of the CHDS is to investigate the relationships of biologic, medical, social, behavioral, genetic and environmental factors in the family to the lifelong health and welfare of the parents, their children and future generations. The CHDS is affiliated with a nonprofit research organization, the Public Health Institute.

Marj is working with Dr. Barbara Cohn, a principal investigator in the CHDS, on two projects:

• Prenatal Environmental Determinants of Intergenerational Risk (funded by the NIH, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences). This research project examines both the role of the pregnancy and prenatal environment on both the mother’s and daughter’s lifetime risk of breast cancer.  Marj is responsible for recruiting and training a diverse group of 10-12 CHDS participants to create a Participant Advisory Panel to partner with Dr. Cohn in the development, conduct, analysis, and results dissemination of this study. 

• Environmental Causes of Breast Cancer across Generations (funded by the California Breast Cancer Research Program). The goal of this five-year $5 million research project is to find out if women exposed to certain chemicals while they were developing in the uterus are more likely to get breast cancer.  Marj is recruiting and managing the external advisory committee comprised of scientists, community advocates and participants in the study.