WASHINGTON – The National Children’s Study announced locations Tuesday where it will recruit 100,000 infants for the nation’s largest long-term study of children’s health and development.

The study will recruit families in 96 locations as geographically and demographically diverse as Orange County, Calif., and Yellow Medicine County, Minn. Researchers will track the children from the womb until they become adults at age 21.

Maine’s Cumberland County was among the locations selected.

Conclusions about the children’s health and environment will drive prevention strategies, health and safety guidelines, educational approaches and, perhaps, treatments to safeguard American children’s well-being.

Criteria for the 96 locations include such considerations as the number of infants whose birth weight was below average. Seventy-five locations include some of the nation’s most crowded counties, while 21 are sparsely populated rural areas.

The 21-year project is led by the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.