Global Environmental & Occupational Health 
Editing data at the Louise Hamilton Center.
CENTERS
OF EXCELLENCE: The
UIC Louise Hamilton Center at the Institute for Pediatrics, Obstetrics,
and Gynecology in Kyiv
A major
milestone in the development of our collaborative Family and Children
of Ukraine research program in Ukraine was the establishment of
a UIC data management center in Kyiv in 1996. Funding for the establishment
of this center was provided by U.S. National Institute for Environmental
Health Sciences and the NIH Fogarty International Center. This
data management center was established under the leadership of
Ms. Louise Hamilton, who was an ELSPAC (European Longitudinal Study
of Pregnancy and Childhood) researcher from the University of Bristol.
Ms. Hamilton relocated to Ukraine, supervised the data-management
tasks for this research program, and trained the Ukrainian data-management
workers and medical practitioners who ultimately assumed her responsibilities.
The skills of our data management center staff are continually
upgraded through advanced training at the University of Illinois.
These staff in turn serve as an important in-country resource,
especially for young Ukrainian scientists. The staff of this center
have been involved in managing data from all of our in-country
research programs. This center has provided technical support to
studies funded by NIEHS, NIOSH, USEPA, USAID, NCHS, and the Ukrainian
government.
This past year, the U.S. National Cancer Institute contracted with the data management
center to assume data management for the bi-national U.S.-Ukraine cohort study
of Chernobyl radiation and thyroid cancer. A new branch of our center is opening
in the Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2001. We are in the process
of expanding the capabilities of this center to include 1) public health informatics;
2) training in research bioethics; and 3) consultation and training in study
design and analysis. The requirements for the expansion of our center include
space, equipment, personnel, information access, and curriculum. Mr. Sasha Zvinchuk
is the manager of this center under the direction of the Great Lakes Center for
Global Environmental and Occupational Health. The center has a staff of 28 including
a systems analyst, programmers, medical record abstractors, field interviewers,
and data entry personnel.
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