Most diseases have their origins before the disease manifest overtly.  There is compelling support for the view that many chronic diseases have their earliest origins during childhood or even prenatally.  Discovering the earliest origins of human disease will help expose their causes and mechanisms and guide more effective, evidence-based treatment and prevention strategies.

Many diseases are believed to have complex origins that include interactions of susceptibility genes with an array of other inciting factors such as infection, lifestyle and psychosocial influences, and environmental exposures. This research will identify and characterize inter‐related, biologically‐based prenatal and childhood determinants of future diseases by studying associations of Who we are (our genetic endowment), How we live (our lifestyle), and Where we live (our social,  physical,  and chemical  environmental exposures) all in the context of How we grow and age (our physical and psychosocial development).  

Prevalence rates of certain chronic diseases are increasing.  We contend that these disconcerting trends are substantially attributable to altered lifestyles and environments interacting with genetic determinants during embryonic, fetal, or childhood development when the genome is especially vulnerable to even minor adverse influences.  This research will focus on defining immune and inflammatory mechanisms as these mechanisms represent common pathways influencing the occurrences and outcomes of an array of  chronic diseases including, as examples, diabetes; obesity; osteoporosis; and cardiovascular, kidney, allergic,  autoimmune/rheumatic, neoplastic, and neurodevelopmental/neuropsychiatric disorders.