The Children’s Health Act of 2000 authorized the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and a consortium of federal agencies to conduct the National Children’s Study. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) join the NICHD in planning and conducting this study. The NICHD and NIEHS are both part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the biomedical research arm of the federal government. Both the CDC and the NIH fall under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the principal federal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, especially for those who are least able to help themselves. The EPA is the arm of the federal government that protects the environment. These six agencies, DHHS, NIH, NICHD, NIEHS, CDC, and EPA, are dedicated to working together to improve the health of our nation’s children through the successful completion of the National Children’s Study.