MISSION STATEMENT

The Center for Developmental Origins of Health (CDOH) is dedicated to constructing a coherent understanding of health, and to using this information to improve public health for this and future generations. Although their scientific backgrounds are widely divergent, the epidemiologists, physicians, and scientists at CDOH share a common understanding of the origins of health and disease. They know that prenatal and early life experiences can have an important impact on our vulnerability to disease later in life, and that there are other critical developmental points during which risk factors play a larger than usual role in determining future health. They understand that many diseases that seem unrelated may actually develop through common pathways, and that as such we must incorporate the perspectives of multiple domains of health in our investigations. And they realize that we must also look at disease and wellness from many perspectives, from the molecular, as in gene – environment interaction, to the societal, as in ethnic and socioeconomic differences.

Unprecedented opportunity through unique resources
CDOH has assembled a multidisciplinary stable of researchers among its faculty and collaborators worldwide, all of whom have devoted their careers to the study of health over the life course. This diversity provides a fertile environment for innovation and exchange of ideas and methods across health disciplines, and allows for an integrated approach to understanding health questions. Moreover, CDOH investigators are affiliated with an extraordinary collection of racially and geographically diverse birth cohorts in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East and Africa, representing some 300,000 individuals in all. Bringing these investigators together under a single programmatic umbrella thus provides for a cutting-edge interdisciplinary research team with access to the veritable treasure trove of data captured via these cohorts over the years – biological samples, maternal interviews, infectious disease and toxic chemical exposures, developmental milestones and much more. The opportunities for life course research are unprecedented. The Center’s considerable data resources are supervised and maintained by a dedicated team of senior biostatisticians and data managers