14/24 The Healthy Brain & Child Development National Consortium

Neurodevelopmental processes are shaped by dynamic interactions between genes and environments.
Maladaptive experiences early in life can alter developmental trajectories, leading to harmful and enduring
developmental sequelae. Pre- and postnatal hazards include maternal substance exposure, toxicant exposures
in pregnancy and early life, maternal health conditions, parental psychopathology, maltreatment, structural
racism, and excessive stress. To elucidate how various environmental hazards impact child development, it is
imperative that a normative template of developmental trajectories over the first 10 years of life be established
based on a sufficiently large and demographically diverse sample of the US population. To accomplish this, the
Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium (HBCD-NC) has been formed to deploy a
harmonized, optimized, and innovative set of neuroimaging (MRI, EEG) measures complemented by an
extensive battery of behavioral, physiological, and psychological tools, and biospecimens to understand
neurodevelopmental trajectories in a sample of 7,500 mothers and infants enrolled at 24 sites across the United
States (US). The HBCD-NC will carry out a common research protocol under direction of the HBCD-NC
Administrative Core (HCAC) and will assemble and distribute a comprehensive and well-curated research
dataset to the scientific community at large under the direction of the HBCD-NC Data Coordinating Center
(HDCC). The overarching goal of the HBCD-NC is to create a comprehensive, harmonized, and high-
dimensional dataset that will characterize typical neurodevelopmental trajectories in US children and that will
assess how biological and environmental exposures affect those trajectories. A special emphasis will be placed
on understanding the impact of pre- and postnatal exposure to opioids, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco and/or other
substances. To address these broad objectives, the sample of women enrolled will include: 1) a racially,
ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse cohort that is representative of the US population; 2) pregnant women
with use of targeted substances (opioids, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco); and 3) demographically and behaviorally
similar women without substance use in pregnancy to enable valid causal inferences. In addition, the HBCD-NC
will identify key developmental windows during which both harmful and protective environments have the most
influence on later neurodevelopmental outcomes. The large, multi-modal, longitudinal, and generalizable dataset
that will be produced for the first time by this study will provide novel insights into child development using state-
of-the-art methods. The HBCD-NC study will inform public policy to improve the health and development of
children across the nation.

Grant Number: 5U01DA055369-05
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Gretchen Bandoli