The Iowa Flood Study was created to build upon the limitations of the original Project Ice Storm. Some of the improvements include:
- A larger number of participants;
- A faster start, which was achieved by piggy-backing onto an already ongoing study that was recruiting women during their pregnancy, prior to the Iowa flooding;
- Collection of data before and after the flooding. Since a sub-group of women were recruited from an ongoing study, in which data had been collected pre-flood, we were able to study various variables in women before they were exposed to the Iowa flooding;
- A more demographically diverse group of participants