Advance Letter to Office Manager

Provider Based Sampling Advance Letter to Office Manager OMB #: 0925-0593

EXPIRATION DATE: 07/31/2013

November 10, 2011

Dear Office Manager:

The National Children’s Study (NCS) is coming to Jefferson County! The University of Louisville is participating with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development and Study Centers across the country to implement the largest study ever conducted to understand environmental influences on children’s health and development from the prenatal period through twenty-one years of life. We are contacting you today because we depend on your support.

We have also sent a letter to the health care providers in your office. However, we know that you are integral to the day-to-day operations of the office so we want you to be informed about our request. Over the next few months, we will be contacting you to gather information about your offices to allow us to develop a sampling plan for recruiting a representative sample of pregnant women from Jefferson County.

We will first be identifying all locations where health care professionals provide prenatal care. We will then be surveying those providers to gather demographic information, in aggregate, about each of their offices and the women they serve. Upon completion of the initial data collection, we will work with NCS statisticians to select a sample of provider offices that we will engage to be NCS recruitment locations. Once those practices have been identified and the providers have agreed to participate, we will begin to recruit pregnant women.

We will be contacting your office soon to solicit your help. Minimal time will be needed to complete the initial phase of provider data collection. Compensation can be negotiated for actual expenses related to the project. Please support our efforts by allowing us to talk to you when we call. We understand how busy you are and we will make every effort to minimize the time required of you and your staff.

Sincerely,

David Tollerud, MD, MPH, Director

Deborah Winders Davis, PhD, Co-Director

Jeffery King, MD, Co-Investigator

Irma Ramos, MD, MPH, Co-Investigator

Bruce Gale, MS, Co-Investigator

Sharon Nuss, MS, Research Manager

NOTE: The University Institutional Review Board has determined that this phase is not human subjects’ research