Welcome to the Grant County Vanguard Location

Welcome to the Grant County, WA, Vanguard location for the National Children’s Study. The Grant County Vanguard Location is one of 10 National Children’s Study locations that will participate in the Vanguard Study using an Enhanced Household-based Recruitment Strategy. The Grant County Study team consists of researchers at the University of Washington’s Pacific Northwest Center for the National Children’s Study and Washington State University (WSU), including WSU Extension. Consultants are from the Grant County Health District, and the Moses Lake and Quincy Community Health Centers. Field work will be led by investigators at the WSU College of Nursing.

Grant County is a large rural county (2,681 square miles), sparsely populated (81,229) with approximately 30.8 persons per square mile. The Columbia Basin Irrigation Project, constructed simultaneously with the Grand Coulee Dam, provides water for irrigation of agricultural land in the county, making agriculture a primary industry. The county contains several distinct subpopulations. It is home to a diverse Hispanic community that includes both long-time residents and migrant farm workers and their families. Relative to the nation as a whole, Grant County has a high percentage of Ukrainian, Russian, and German immigrants, with the county having the third highest percentage of Ukrainian speakers of any county in the nation.