To generate insights into the impact of prenatal environmental exposure on adverse health outcomes, BLEEP seeds early stage epidemiological research that utilizes the State of Michigan’s newborn blood spot repository – the Michigan Neonatal BioBank – to investigate whether researchers can obtain environmental exposure and genetic information from the available bloodspots.
The $450,000 award from the URC has been distributed to 12 early stage epidemiological research projects through two competitive rounds of funding. Preliminary results from a number of these projects have yielded academic publications and external funding.