WTC Youth Research Cohort Moves Forward

The World Trade Center Health Program is seeking proposals for a Youth Research Coordinating Center, the first concrete step toward a cohort intended to study long-term physical, mental, and educational effects of 9/11-related exposures among people who were young at the time of the attacks, according to 9/11 Health Watch.

Congress authorized the Research Cohort for Emerging Health Impacts on Youth in December 2022 through an amendment to the Public Health Service Act. The cohort may include people aged 21 years or younger on September 11, 2001, including those exposed in utero, as well as age-appropriate control populations. It must be large enough to support future studies, sufficiently represent this age-defined population, and include screening-eligible or certified-eligible World Trade Center survivors.

The initiative addresses limited existing data on people exposed early in life. The World Trade Center Health Registry includes 71,000 responders and survivors, but only 2,869 enrollees were children at the time of the attacks. According to 9/11 Health Watch, the available population is insufficient for some research involving child development, reproductive problems, cancer, and overall health, and a suitable unexposed control group is lacking.

In June 2026, authors including World Trade Center Health Program Administrator John Howard published a commentary in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine outlining a central coordinating center supported by community-based field sites as a potential approach. NIOSH released a related update on August 26 titled “New 9/11 Research Center on Early Life Exposure.”

The planned cohort is intended to assess whether physical and mental health conditions have emerged among people exposed at a young age and to support research into health and educational effects. Recruitment may be complicated by the limited enrollment of children and women of childbearing age in existing programs and by geographic mobility among people exposed while young.

Source: 9/11 Health Watch. Youth Research Cohort. 9/11 Health Watch. Updated September 10, 2026. Accessed September 11, 2026.