Hawaii researchers will begin following this month more than 1,000 Oahu newborns and soon-to-be-borns for the next 21 years of their lives as part of the biggest study of how environmental and genetic influences affect America’s children, researchers announced yesterday.

Postcards will be sent next Monday inviting women ages 18 to 49 who are pregnant — or plan to become pregnant — who live in a dozen Oahu communities selected to represent the demographics of the islands.

Oahu representatives from the National Children’s Study will then fan out into the neighborhoods beginning Oct. 18 to identify more than 1,000 children who will be followed and studied for the next two decades.

The ultimate goal is to collect data on more than 100,000 American children and examine how environmental influences such as air, water and diet mix with genetic factors to shape children’s development around the country.

Ultimately, the study will help guide national policies relating to childhood diseases such as asthma, autism, obesity and diabetes, said Dr. Lynnae Sauvage, principal investigator with the National Children’s Study. She is a professor and chairwoman of obstetrics, gynecology and women’s health at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine.

The 12 Oahu neighborhoods the children will come from — Moanalua, Salt Lake, Pearl Harbor, Ewa Beach, Waipahu, Mililani, Schofield Barracks, Waianae, Haleiwa, Hauula, Kailua and the area around Honolulu Airport — were selected to mirror Hawaii’s demographics.

Seven study sites already have been chosen around the country, and UH’s medical school joins a new wave of 30 additional study centers that are beginning their work.

Ultimately, there will be 105 study centers that will coordinate with each other as participants move around the country, Sauvage said.

"With the military, they are tricky to follow because they go overseas, obviously," Sauvage said. "We will have to plan to follow them by phone if they move to someplace like Okinawa. It’s the same for other people who leave Hawaii."

The Oahu portion of the study will cost more than $14 million for the first five years. It will even look at factors affecting children before birth, such as prenatal care and the use of techniques such as ultrasound.

"We’ll start with the mothers because pregnancy itself can affect the child’s health," said investigator Dr. Elizabeth McFarlane.

As the children grow, McFarlane said, many other environmental factors will be considered.

"We hope to go into schools and see how schooling affects children’s ultimate performance and health," McFarlane said. "We may collect soil and air samples to look at how the physical environment affects schoolchildren."

Dr. Beatriz Rodriguez, co-director of the Oahu study, called the project "our chance to learn all we can about children’s health" — from pre-term development to obesity.

"We will look at how the environment affects the health and development of our children," Rodriguez said.

Sauvage hopes to gain "greater insight into disorders of birth and infancy, as well as adult disorders that are believed to be influenced by early life exposures and events. … What we learn will be used to improve the well-being of children in Hawaii and the nation for generations to come."

In 2000, Congress authorized the National Children’s Study with the Children’s Health Act of 2000.

The project is led by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health. Partners include the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency.