Maintaining and Enriching the UCSD Human Milk Research Biorepository (HMB) Cohort to Support Scientific Diversity - PROJECT SUMMARY Human milk is considered the recommended sole source of human nutrition worldwide for at least the first six months of life and is the recommended continued source of human nutrition for at least the first two years of life. Yet, from a scientific perspective this basic human tissue type has been grossly understudied. The UC San Diego Human Milk Research Biorepository (HMB) was established in 2014 as a first-of-its-kind environmental epidemiology cohort (EEC) consisting of indexed human milk samples and associated clinical data that is available to the scientific community to aid our understanding of this critical source of infant nutrition. This open cohort study has accumulated over 110,000 aliquots of human milk samples to date from across the nation along with associated broad-based longitudinal data on infant health and development. Accordingly, it provides unprecedented current and future value to researchers and trainees as well as public health entities to better understand the short, intermediate, and long-term role of human milk in human health and disease. However, the existing cohort is lacking diversity in several critical areas, including racial/ethnic diversity and socioeconomic diversity. This proposal aims to increase the diversity of the HMB EEC by partnering with local lactation groups and academic and/or community partners in targeted diverse settings to enhance the recruitment of diverse populations into the study. Namely, we will recruit 300 new participants who represent low or low-middle income households and/or who self-identify as Black or Hispanic/LatinX. We further aim to improve the accessibility of the HMB EEC data to the scientific community through key enhancements to the study website and resource infrastructure. Finally, we will engage in efforts to raise awareness of the HMB EEC as a research resource that is available to lactation scientists who themselves represent populations that are underrepresented in medicine or who focus their research on questions pertaining to minority health and health disparities. This will be accomplished via the establishment of partnerships with historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions to explore opportunities to enhance the diversity of the workforce involved in breast milk research. The HMB EEC provides unmatched value to the research community and public health entities to better understand the role of breast milk in child health and development across the lifespan. By enhancing the diversity of the cohort and improving the accessibility of the data to the scientific community at-large and specifically to diverse groups of human milk researchers, this EEC will provide greater benefit not only in the area of minority health and health disparities-related breast milk research but will also provide a unique cross-sectional snapshot of the “health” of the breast milk supply across the nation that can be monitored over time, by location, and by specific demographic groups.
