Notice Number: NOT-ES-17-001

Key Dates
Release Date: September 27, 2016
Open Date: September 30, 2016

Issued by
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)

Purpose

This Notice is to provide overview information about the Children's Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) and to announce the ability to register with CHEAR and submit proposals for consideration for analytical services.

About CHEAR:

The Children’s Health Exposure Analysis Resource (CHEAR) seeks to advance understanding about how the environment impacts children’s health and development by providing access to laboratory analysis of environmental exposures and data analysis consultation at no cost to the investigator.

CHEAR will expand the range of environmental exposures assessed in NIH-funded children’s health studies through both Laboratory and Statistical support. The laboratory analyses provided by CHEAR span the breadth of the exposome to include not only chemical pollutants but also biological, psychosocial and physical environments which can be assessed through biological samples. The laboratories offer three types of services:

• Targeted Analysis: Hypothesis driven measurements of specific markers of exposure or other factors known to influence the health of children.
• Untargeted Analysis: The hypothesis free, exploratory analysis of associations between chemicals and metabolites in biological samples with biological endpoints.
• Biological Response Indicator Analysis: The targeted or untargeted analysis of biomarkers of response which can be used to provide additional mechanistic or phenotypic anchoring of the exposures measured by CHEAR.

The CHEAR Data Center, likewise, provides a data repository for sharing and analyzing data from the CHEAR labs as well as associated epidemiological data, statistical and informatic analytical services, and ontological and data standards support to the broader exposure science and children's health community.

Eligibility and Accessing CHEAR:

You may be eligible to utilize the CHEAR resource to analyze the biological samples available from your study if you meet the following criteria:

• You have an ongoing or completed epidemiological or clinical study on children’s health
• You want to expand the information generated by your study to include environmental exposure data, or you need more extensive analysis of exposures beyond those you have already collected
• Your study was funded at least in part by NIH extramural funds
• You are eligible to apply for an NIH grant at your home institution
• Your study’s samples are biological specimens collected from children and/or their parents
• You agree to share experimental design details and supporting data, including phenotypic data at the individual level, needed to facilitate the analysis to be conducted by the CHEAR consortium including both the CHEAR Data Center and Laboratory Network.

CHEAR will begin to accept registrations and requests for services through the CHEAR webpage at https://chearprogram.org on September 30, 2016. Proposals will be accepted continuously and reviewed several times per year. The CHEAR webpage also contains detailed information on the services available to the grantee community through CHEAR and the processes to access the Resource.

Inquiries

Please direct all inquiries to:

David M. Balshaw, PhD
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Telephone: 919-541-2448
Email: Balshaw@mail.nih.gov

Claudia Thompson, PhD
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)
Telephone: 919-541-4638
Email: Claudia.Thompson@nih.gov