ATTLEBORO - Sturdy Memorial Hospital will participate along with three other Bristol County hospitals as part of a historic study of environmental factors on health.

The hospital will be part of an unprecedented study aimed at following 100,000 children from birth through age 21, according to a news release by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Sturdy is cooperating with Brown University and Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, who were awarded a $12 million, five-year contract to finance their participation in the National Children's Study.

Other local hospitals involved include Morton Hospital and Medical Center in Taunton, Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River and St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford.

The newly announced grant will allow researchers to add 1,000 families from Bristol County, along with a previously funded study of 1,000 families from Providence County, R.I., whose children will be studied for the next 21 years. Brown and Women & Infants were selected last year as one of 22 new centers that would take part in the National Children's Study, the largest long-term study of children's health and development ever conducted in the United States.

"We are most appreciative and proud of this NIH award, especially given the increasingly competitive environment for federal research funding," said Dr. Edward Wing, dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown. "Not only does this help advance the meaningful partnerships we have in Southeastern New England between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but it also provides tangible evidence of national recognition of the excellence in public health, medicine, and research of the Brown faculty and our colleagues at Women & Infants Hospital."

Kathi Hague, a spokeswoman for Sturdy Memorial Hospital, said it would be premature to comment on the hospital's role as details have yet to be worked out.

The national study is intended to improve the health of children and enable researchers to examine environmental factors that affect the health of residents in the communities being studied.

Principal investigator of these projects is Stephen L. Buka, professor of community health at Brown and director of the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology. Co-principal investigator is Dr. Maureen G. Phipps, director of the Division of Research in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Women & Infants and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and community health at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

At a national level, the National Children's Study will enroll a representative sample of 100,000 infants and follow them from before birth to age 21.

Locally, investigators will interview a random sample of more than 10,000 households each in Providence and Bristol counties. Recruitment is scheduled to begin in 2010.

A research team will follow children's lives beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy, partly through home visits and partly in clinical settings.

Data will also be collected via telephone, computer or mail-in questionnaires. Biological samples from the mother, father and child, as well as air, water, soil and dust from the child's environment will be collected.

Hague said the study is supported by Sturdy, which agreed to participate and backed the original application. The hospital's participation in the study will not begin until 2010, she said. The National Children's Study has attracted a broad base of supporters in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, including the congressional delegation.

"I am pleased that this important study will be extended to communities in Bristol County," said U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Newton. "This type of long-range research will contribute in a positive way to the ongoing effort to improve the health care of children in Southeastern Massachusetts. The fact that the work will be done in partnership with some of the area's leading hospitals will help ensure that the results are of the highest quality."