The Avera Research Institutes Center for Pediatric and Community Research has received a seventeen million dollar grant from the National Institute of Health.

The grant will be used for a children’s health study called ECHO, or Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes.

Amy Elliot, Chief Clinical Research Officer with the pediatric center says it has been a long term project….

Elliot says they will study many outside factors in a child’s development….

Elliot says there are some medical conditions that could benefit from the extended research…

The ECHO project will also use existing projects, and gather information from more than fifty thousand children across the country.