The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have funded five institutions under cooperative agreements to study the role of prenatal alcohol exposure in the risk for SIDS and adverse pregnancy outcomes such as stillbirth and fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) over five years.  Nearly $6 million of these funds were awarded to The University of South Dakota for research by Dr. Amy Elliott at Sanford Research/University of South Dakota (USD) and Dr. Larry Burd at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine.  Drs. Elliott and Burd will conduct community-linked studies at select clinics and hospitals across the Northern Plains.  

The studies resulting from this award seek to understand how and why alcohol adversely affects the fetus during critical phases of development, how it affects maternal health during pregnancy, and how it adversely influences the neurodevelopmental outcome of the infant.  This knowledge may help public health programs implement preventive strategies for SIDS, stillbirth and alcohol-related disorders.

The five awarded institutions form the Prenatal Alcohol in SIDS and Stillbirth (PASS) Network. The members of the PASS Network are:  Comprehensive Clinical Sites at Sanford Research/USD (Sioux Falls, SD) and Stellenbosch University (Tygerberg, South Africa); the Developmental Biology and Pathology Center at Children’s Hospital, Boston; a Physiology Assessment Center at Columbia University; and, a Data Coordinating Analysis Center at DM-STAT (Boston, MA) and representatives from the NICHD and NIAAA.

Sanford Research/USD is a non-profit organization formed as a partnership between the Sanford School of Medicine of The University of South Dakota and Sioux Valley Hospitals & Health System.  Sanford Research/USD is dedicated to research excellence through the work of its Health Disparities Institute, Cardiovascular Research Center, Signal Transduction Institute, Cancer Biology Institute, and Nutrition and Metabolic Disease Institute.   Dr. Elliott is director of the Health Disparities Institute, which is designed to provide an infrastructure for communities and investigators to interact in designing research programs with the goal of eliminating health disparities.