Childhood Obesity Research Core

The Childhood Obesity Research Core (CORC) supports basic, clinical, and translational researchers focused on childhood nutrition and obesity and enhances integration of research into the clinical delivery system.

Objective

The objective of the newly established Childhood Obesity Research Core (CORC) is to support childhood nutrition and obesity investigators with access to a large repository of amassed clinical electronic health record (EHR) data; clinical and health information technology (IT) services to integrate research into the “real-world” healthcare delivery setting; and access to banked research data and biospecimens from deeply phenotyped maternal and pediatric research cohorts. Framed within the learning health system infrastructure, the CORC aims to accelerate translational research through accessing and capitalizing on existing and well-characterized sources of data.

Our services include:

• Data repository services including the ability to provide investigators with deidentified or limited datasets for secondary analyses, data queries, and visual dashboards.
• Consultative and direct services to support clinical research including the design, development, and deployment of health IT tools for research, guidance on study design and analytic approaches, consultation on regulatory oversight, and staff support for subject recruitment and data/biospecimens collection.
• Provide access to datasets and banked biospecimens from previous research cohorts including Healthy Families, Conventional and Metabolomic Predictors of Pediatric Prediabetes & Insulin Resistance, Early Life Exposures in Mexico to ENvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT), and the Biorepository of Understanding Maternal and Pediatric health (BUMPh).
• Facilitate access to additional data sources including the PaTH Clinical Research Network and specimens from the Michigan Neonatal Biobank.

If you are interested in using our services, please submit this brief form

Research Facilities

The CORC Data Repository extracts data from the Michigan Medicine EHR Clarity and Research Data Warehouse databases, capturing data from over 200,000 pediatric patients aged 0-17 seen at Michigan Medicine from 2012 to present, including demographics and clinical and patient-reported outcomes, and also has information on maternal health via maternal linkages to the children.

Directors