A massive, exhaustive $6 billion national study designed to uncover new links between the environment, heredity and childhood disease is coming to Bristol County in Massachusetts.

Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital have announced that they will receive $12 million over five years to bring the National Children’s Study to the region.

Providence is already included in the extraordinary undertaking, which will last for a generation.

The effort is comparable in size and scope to the legendary Framingham Heart Study, based in Framingham, Mass., which began 60 years ago and continues to provide valuable information on the role of diet, exercise and the various treatments for heart disease.

The National Children’s Study will look at childhood health issues such as asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, obesity, diabetes and injuries, said Stephen L. Buka, director of the Center for Population Health and Clinical Epidemiology at Brown.

Buka said the project will require hiring 30 to 40 people to collect data from about 1,000 women and their children in Bristol County as the researchers look at mothers before conception and during pregnancy, and the children from birth to age 21.

Enrollment will begin in 2011, one year after the project begins in Providence.

“We’ll randomly pick about 15 different neighborhoods, each with about 1,000 dwelling units” and visit every one looking for pregnant women or women who might become pregnant, asking them to sign up for the study, Buka said.

The researchers will collect tissue samples from the mother, father and each child to look for inherited elements of various diseases.

Samples of air, water, soil and dust will also be collected, along with diet information.

They will be used to assess the environment, “not only the physical environment, but the social environment, maternal stress and safety in the neighborhoods,” Buka said.

He said the study won’t ramp up until 2010 because “the whole enterprise is very big, ambitious and expensive” and the researchers will need the time to first test their methods on a smaller scale.

Buka said the first wave of results, which could deal with issues such as stillbirths, miscarriage and prematurity, could be released as soon as 2015.

gemery@projo.com