Maintenance and Enrichment of the Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) Cohort - Reducing the burden of chronic adverse health outcomes, including diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, depression, heart disease, cancer, and preterm birth is a top U.S. public health priority. While evidence suggests that these health outcomes are a result of complex mechanisms across the life course, studying exposures to multiple environmental toxicants beginning in the in utero period has the potential to elucidate causal mechanisms underlying the burden of chronic diseases. The Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors (MADRES) cohort is a prospective pregnancy cohort of more than 1000 mother-child pairs in Los Angeles, California. MADRES examines environmental and social determinants of maternal and child health outcomes both during and after pregnancy. A wide range of data are collected via interviewer-administered questionnaires and validated instruments, as well as anthropometric and body composition data, and a broad suite of biospecimens from both mother and child. Environmental exposures were assigned to residential addresses of participants across time (e.g., ambient and traffic-related air pollution) or measured in stored biospecimens (e.g., PFAS, metals, emerging chemicals of concern). The MADRES cohort is a unique resource and one of the largest US environmental health pregnancy cohorts. The proposed project would capitalize on the significant investment to date and would allow for re-engagement of inactive participants, continued follow-up and maintenance of staff infrastructure, collection of biospecimens for future studies, new opportunities for enhancing the environmental health sciences workforce, and increased capacity for data sharing with the scientific community. We propose the following four specific aims: (1) Maintain, enrich and support the continuation of the MADRES cohort; (2) Enhance the existing MADRES biospecimen repository to annually collect blood and urine from mothers and blood, urine and saliva from children to preserve for future studies; (3) Expand data sharing and quality assurance protocols for the MADRES cohort; and (4) Provide opportunities for early-stage investigators from the undergraduate to postdoctoral levels. We will work across the U24 consortium of cohorts to promote data sharing best practices, sharing of tools, and development of novel metrics and common measures for conducting collaborative analyses across cohort studies.
