Perspective on the National Children's Study from a Vanguard Study Center

To ensure high participation rates each NCS Study Center is engaged in a wide range of community engagement activities to lay the groundwork for participant recruitment and for participant visits. Each Study Center works with local communities to prepare for recruitment and for home- and clinic-based participant data collection activities. These community activities include identification of community representatives and resources and recruitment of community partners to facilitate engagement. Examples include: early engagement of community leaders to garner support for the study; formation of community advisory boards; and gather information about the communities wherein the segments lie by attending and conducting presentations at municipal council, community, church, and school meetings. Reliance on secondary data sources like environmental and geographic data enhance these activities and are used to select the segments for actual data collection. Following segment selection, prior to launch of field operations, Study Center staff “list” every Dwelling Unit (DU) in the segments. Each Study Center modifies their proposed staffing plans, recruits, hires and trains field staff for: Enumeration, Pregnancy Screening, and Consent (EPSC), home- and clinic-based participant data collection activities, and proper data transmission, QC, and editing procedures. Field staff approach the DUs within the segments, through EPSC they recruit age eligible women who are pregnant or likely to become pregnant. Those eligible for full participation are scheduled for home-based data and sample collection visits. Vanguard Study Centers relate their experiences with protocol implementation such that modifications can be made to improve the efficiency of the Main Study.