United by Our Interests

Three weeks ago, we released the Community Voices videos and have been really excited about your responses. Hundreds of people have watched our YouTube channel, “Liked” our Facebook page and visited this blog as a result of our campaign. In addition, we have been collecting feedback about our videos at community meetings and events. If you haven’t had a chance to tell us what you think about the videos, please do so here.

When we started reaching out to community agencies all across Cook County to inform them about the National Children’s Study, our goal was to start a two-way conversation. As members of the community, we are well aware how an unhealthy community affects everyone. If we can learn through a long-term study like the NCS how homes, schools, and neighborhoods influence the health and safety of our kids, we believe we could build the evidence that we need to address and potentially prevent many problems. Besides sharing our side of the story, we wanted to hear from community leaders, parents, teachers, healthcare providers, and others about protecting and improving the health of their communities.

In the past couple of weeks, we have talked about the importance of longitudinal studies and the role of participants. In this week’s outtake, one of our partners shares her story regarding her work in the community:




We wanted to find a common ground for the entire community to come together around the NCS. As people who live and work in Cook County, we all want our kids to grow up in a healthy environment. By this, we mean we want them to have access to high quality schools, clean water, stores with fresh produce, and safe parks where they can be active, among many other things. As NCS data become available, it will be used to analyze the effect on health of genetics, personal choice and the environment that could ultimately be used to develop programs and policies that protect the health of our families and communities for years to come.