# The American Lung Association (ALA) Lung Health Cohort

> **NIH NIH U01** · NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $4,192,016

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Pulmonary physicians and respiratory researchers define respiratory health as the absence of lung disease.
This simplistic definition has limited the development of a robust approach to the prevention of lung disease.
Because of the absence of adult life-course studies focused primarily on lung health, the intermediate
phenotypes of impaired lung health (which exist on a continuum between ideal lung health and lung disease)
have not been well-defined. There is a critical need to identify modifiable risk factors and biomarkers for
impaired lung health that will allow clinicians to recognize impaired lung health and intervene before chronic
lung disease develops. We will leverage the national infrastructure of the American Lung Association’s (ALA)
Airways Clinical Research Centers (ACRC) to form the first national cohort of adults focused on respiratory
health. We will recruit 4000 community-dwelling adults aged 25-35 from 17 metropolitan regions across the
U.S. for the purpose of defining lung health and developing targets to intercept chronic lung disease at its
earliest stages. Our long-term goal is to determine early adulthood factors that influence risk for future lung
disease through detailed assessments of exposures (environmental, socio-behavioral, and occupational) and
responses (physiologic, imaging-based, and biological including the nasal epithelial transcriptome). In this
initial baseline evaluation, informed by our preliminary data indicating impaired lung health (lower lung function,
self-report of respiratory symptoms, lung injury on chest CT scan) precedes the development of chronic lung
disease, we will test several hypotheses regarding the risk factors and manifestations of impaired lung health
in young adults through the following specific aims: (1) Determine whether modifiable exposures and risk
factors (lifetime air pollution, potentially noxious inhalational exposures such as marijuana and e-cigarettes,
reduced physical activity) are associated with lower lung function and greater burden of respiratory symptoms
in young adults; (2) Determine whether CT-measurements of small airway and parenchymal lung injury are
associated with lower lung function and greater burden of respiratory symptoms in young adults; (3) Determine
the association between the nasal respiratory epithelial transcriptome and selected blood biomarkers, CT-
measured small airway abnormality and parenchymal lung injury in young adults. We will test the hypotheses
that (1) lifetime exposure to air pollution and other inhalational exposures (e.g. e-cigarettes and marijuana) are
associated with impaired lung health; (2) novel imaging measurements are associated with impaired lung
health; and (3) respiratory compartment-specific (nasal epithelial transciptome) and blood based biomarkers
provide insight into the biologic underpinnings of impaired lung health. These studies will describe the
divergence between respiratory health and disease ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10219828
- **Project number:** 5U01HL146408-03
- **Recipient organization:** NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Mercedes Renee Carnethon
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $4,192,016
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-06-15 → 2025-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10219828

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10219828, The American Lung Association (ALA) Lung Health Cohort (5U01HL146408-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10219828. Licensed CC0.

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