On October 19, the NIEHS/EPA Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Research Centers released their 2017 Children’s Centers Impact Report, and CRECE was among the centers featured within its 120 pages. The report’s theme was “protecting children’s health where they live, learn, and play” and featured significant contributions research centers have made “toward reducing the burden of environmentally induced or exacerbated diseases placed on children.”
Specifically, the Non-Nutritive Suck Device of CRECE’s Project 1 is discussed in the “New Methods and Technology” section of the report. This device was developed by Dr. Emily Zimmerman to quantitatively test suck patterns in infants, information which can be a key indicator of infant neural development. The ultimate goal of this study is to use this data to develop intervention processes to improve outcomes for babies born prematurely. As the report points out, this is the first time this technology has been used in environmental health science history.
View the full report here.