The National Children's Study will be a nationwide research effort spanning two decades dedicated to gathering data to treat and prevent some of the nation's most pressing health problems, such as autism, asthma, birth defects, heart disease and obesity, a news release from the Burns School of Medicine said.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Environmental Protection Agency is overseeing the $2.8 billion Congress-mandated study into environmental and genetic factors on child and human health.

The study will involve 100,000 families nationwide including 1,000 in Hawai'i.

Dr. Lynnae Sauvage, interim chair of the Obstetrics, Gynecology and Women's Health at the John A. Burns School of Medicine and head of the Hawai'i study effort, said funding for the local effort, which will amount to $14.5 million over five years, started Monday. Research dollars to Hawai'i could total $50 million over 20 years.

The study will be concentrated on O'ahu and involve work with health-care professionals, community leaders, local hospitals, the state Health Department, and door-to-door recruitment of women who are pregnant or likely to have a child in the near future to participate, Sauvage said.

The plan is to identify 15 geographically and culturally diversed neighborhoods and set up the screening process for environmental factors such as dust and pollution, and health screening and monitoring of mothers and children, added Sauvage.