CDC issued a grant notice to develop the first Midwest Health Informatics Database to examine the relationship between the environment and diseases. CDC plans to award FY 2010 funds for $450,000 to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha to develop the database. The project will focus on collecting health information and samples from approximately 50,000 Midwest residents from ages 35-64.
A survey tool will be developed to collect personal health information from willing participants that might include blood, tissue, and DNA samples. A database would then be created for epidemiologists to track the relationship between environment and disease.
For the past several years, CDC has funded Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) network projects with several universities. The purpose for the CDC funding is to develop and apply methods that can be used to analyze and interpret data to support state and local agency EPHT network programs.
So far, the Universities working on the EPHT network include Tulane, University of California at Berkeley, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and the University of Pittsburgh.
The funding opportunity notice for the “Environmental Health Informatics Project-University of Nebraska-Medical Center, Omaha (CDC-RFA-EH10-002E) is published on www.grants.gov.
