Due to your generosity, our research team was able to raise $7,600 for our study. We can't thank you enough for helping us reach our goal and we're excited to begin recruiting participants to take part in this randomized study!  We are also so pleased to be able to provide these participants with fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the second and third trimesters of their pregnancies.  We're genuinely enthusiastic about this project, which we think will be valuable to the participants and to everyone who wrestles with the question of whether or not to buy organic food. Our team will continue to post updates on this webpage as the study progresses, but please feel free to check out Dr. Curl's Lab Website and twitter account (@AgHealth_BSU) for more frequent news regarding the study.

Again, thank you for supporting research at Boise State University!

By giving up one Starbucks coffee this week and donating to our campaign, you can help us provide more pregnant women from the WIC program with produce throughout their second and third trimesters of pregnancy!

For those of you who have donated and who have taken the time to share our crowdfunding efforts, our team can't thank you enough - in less than 2 weeks, we're officially halfway to our goal! We've officially raised $3,750, and we are so grateful for your support. However, we still need your help as we continue toward our goal of $7,500 dollars. Our team wants to continue reaching out to everyone who may be interested in understanding the potential health effects of an organic diet, so please tell your family and friends about this project! 

Thank you so much, and we'll continue to keep you updated throughout the remaining 18 days of our crowdfunding project!

Friends,

We are almost 50% of the way to our goal of $7500, which is a fantastic achievement in just over 3 days.  I am humbled by your generosity, interest and excitement about our project.

If you have already given, thank you so much.  Your gift will make a difference both for the participants in our study and for the state of the science regarding organic agriculture.  If you haven’t had a chance to donate yet, please consider supporting this project. Even a small donation makes a big difference.

The other way you can help is by talking with your friends and family about this project.  I know that there are lots of folks who have questions about the value of organic food to the consumer, and donating to this project is a great way to help figure that out.

I also wanted to let you know about an interview I had with Samantha Wright, which aired on Boise’s local NPR affiliate during the All Things Considered broadcast earlier this week.  This interview provides more information about our study than we could fit into our video, and you can listen to it here. 

I’ve been getting some great questions about this project.  For example, I’ve been asked how we will know if the study participants really stick to the diets we provide them.  I thought I’d take this opportunity to answer that question, in case you’re wondering too.  First, we’ll ask the participants to record what they eat.  Even more objectively, we have funding from another source to collect a series of urine samples from each participant, which we will analyze for a suite of pesticide metabolites.  If the participants are adhering to the diets we provide, we’ll be able to tell that from those biological measurements.  If they aren’t, we’ll get in touch with them to figure out how we can make it easier to comply with our study.

Again, I can’t thank you enough for helping to make this project a success.  I’m so happy to see how quickly we have approached this critical funding milestone, thanks to your generosity.

Please continue to spread the word about this project!  

Many thanks,  Cynnie