Our study requires information about the stress, behaviour, and lifestyle choices of the biological mother when pregnant. As these questions can only be answered by the biological mother, we are unable to recruit children without their biological mothers.

No, you have the choice to enroll your child to participate. We encourage you to explain the study using our assent form to your child so they can decide if they would like to participate or not. Your child is free to drop out of the study at any time by contacting us.

No, we are only collecting biological samples from child participants. Providing biological samples is an optional part of this study.

Yes. Biological mothers are required to complete one online survey. Consenting for us to access your child’s archived Newborn Dried Blood Spot is required, but providing a cheek (buccal) swab is an optional part of this study.

Your child’s samples and survey responses will be de-identified so they will not contain your child’s name or personal identifying information such as their SIN number. Their samples will be stored at BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute. The building is access-limited and the samples will only be analyzed by authorized researchers of the BC Wildfire Study team. Any information that could identify you will be held in secure, password protected databases stored in a fire-wall-protected server at BC Children’s Hospital. After the study is completed and the institution’s mandatory archival period (5 years) is up, any leftover samples will be destroyed. Scientists will look at certain proteins and/or marks on genes that influence the activity of genes and how many proteins may be produced. By looking at these marks, they can test for associations between early life wildfire smoke exposure and changes to DNA or inflammation since birth. Researchers will only have access to samples and responses that have been de-identified. 

Please check out our Biological Samples page to find more information about this optional part of the study.

We are recruiting 1200 children who were in utero over the wildfire seasons of 2016 – 2023. Recruitment will continue until we reach 1200 participants. Your child can enroll at a later time if we are still recruiting. Please contact us to find out more.

Please encourage them to visit our website to complete the screening survey or contact our team to find out more.

We encourage you to complete the survey using our secure online platform. This makes sure your responses are automatically saved so you don’t have to complete the survey in one sitting. If you prefer to complete the survey over the phone or would prefer a paper form, please contact our study team.

The online survey will take about 1 – 2 hours to complete. You can save your progress and come back to complete it at any time. The optional biological samples will take between 15 – 30 minutes to self-administer.

To compensate your time spent in this study, we will be providing an online gift card to participants.

In order for our scientists to determine the level of wildfire exposure experienced by your child, we need the postal codes and the name of the city where your child lived.

You are still eligible to participate! Having participants from areas with little or no wildfire activity is incredibly valuable because it gives us data from areas that were not exposed to help us compare and better understand the effects of wildfire exposure. Your participation helps provide a clearer picture of what changes, if any, are specifically linked to wildfire events versus those that occur naturally over time. 

You have the choice to enroll as many children as you would like, as long as they fulfill the eligibility requirements. We encourage you to explain the study using our assent form to each child so they can decide individually if they would like to participate. If you wish to enroll multiple children in the study, please complete one screening survey for each child you would like to enroll. Each of your children are free to drop out of the study at any time by contacting us, regardless of whether their sibling remains part of the study.

We are not able to return individual level results but if you consent, we will be able to share the overall/ general findings of the study with you as they become available.

We encourage you to read through our consent form and explain the study to your child using our assent form. Both files can also be found here.

If you have additional questions, please visit the Contact page to send us a message.