History
The impetus for NICHD came from the Task Force on the Health and Well-Being of Children, convened in 1961 and led by Dr. Robert E. Cooke, a senior medical advisor to President John F. Kennedy. Eunice Kennedy Shriver also served on the task force, which reported that more research was needed on the physical, emotional, and intellectual growth of children.
The U.S. Congress established NICHD in 1962 as the first NIH institute to focus on the entire life process rather than on a specific disease or body system. NICHD became a funding source for research on birth defects and intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs), created a new pediatrics specialty, and established IDDs as a field of research. The institute also focused on the idea that adult health has its origins in early development and that behavior and social science were important aspects of human development. [2]
On December 21, 2007, by act of Congress (Public Law 110–54), NICHD was renamed the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in honor of Mrs. Shriver's vision, dedication, and contributions to the founding of the institute. [3]
Operation
As of November 2016, the director of NICHD is Diana W. Bianchi. [6]
NICHD's budget in 2015 was an estimated $1.3 billion, which supported research at institutions, universities, and organizations throughout the world, as well as research conducted by NICHD scientists on the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD, and at other facilities.
Components
Source: [7]
- Office of the Director
- Division of Extramural Research
- Child Development and Behavior Branch
- Contraceptive Discovery and Development Branch
- Developmental Biology and Structural Variation Branch
- Fertility and Infertility Branch
- Gynecologic Health and Disease Branch
- Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch
- Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch
- Obstetric and Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics Branch
- Pediatric Growth and Nutrition Branch
- Pediatric Trauma and Critical Illness Branch
- Population Dynamics Branch
- Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch
- National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research
- Division of Intramural Population Health Research
- Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Branch
- Epidemiology Branch
- Health Behavior Branch
- Division of Intramural Research
- Office of the Scientific Director
- Scientific Affinity Groups
- Aquatic Models of Human Development
- Basic Mechanisms of Genome Regulation
- Behavioral Determinants and Developmental Imaging
- Bone and Matrix Biology in Development and Disease
- Cell and Structural Biology
- Cell Regulation and Development
- Developmental Endocrine Oncology and Genetics
- Genetics and Epigenetics of Development
- Integrative Membrane, Cell, and Tissue Pathophysiology
- Metals Biology and Molecular Medicine
- Neurosciences
- Pediatric Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Molecular Genetics
- Perinatal and Obstetrical Research
- Reproductive Endocrine and Gynecology
National Children's Study
The National Children's Study (NCS) was a longitudinal cohort study that planned to recruit participants from across the United States of America. The NCS was led by the National Institutes of Health, with the NICHD serving as the scientific lead. It was intended to measure the many factors that contribute to health and disease from before birth through age 21. This included, but was not limited to, the search for drivers of diseases with prenatal or developmental origins. The Study was closed in December 2014. [8] [9]
Organization
Within NICHD, the NCS Program Office administered the implementation of day-to-day Study operations. The Program Office was supervised by the Study Director, Steven Hirschfeld, MD, PhD Associate Director for Clinical Research, NICHD.
For advice and recommendations regarding Study framework, content, and methodologies, the NCS Program Office engaged external advisors and scientific groups. These groups included federal partners such as the NCS Federal Advisory Committee and a Federal Consortium with representatives from multiple federal agencies including: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. An independent Study Monitoring and Oversight Committee monitored study progress and participant safety.
In addition to these more formal channels, the NCS solicited feedback from subject matter experts from around the world and from individuals, community advocates, and professional societies concerned with child health. The NCS Program Office also provided public forums for input on a variety of initiatives. [10]
Congressional Mandate
The "President's Task Force on Health Risks and Safety Risks to Children" recommended this federal initiative in 1999, after which Congress passed the Children's Health Act of 2000 (Title X, Section 1004). The Act charged NICHD to:
- plan, develop, and implement a prospective cohort study, from birth to adulthood, to evaluate the effects of both chronic and intermittent exposures on child health and human development; and
- investigate basic mechanisms of developmental disorders and environmental factors, both risk and protective, that influence health and developmental processes.
The Act required this NCS to:
- incorporate behavioral, emotional, educational, and contextual consequences to enable a complete assessment of the physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial environmental influences on children's well-being;
- gather data on environmental influences and outcomes on diverse populations of children, which may include the consideration of prenatal exposures; and
- consider health disparities among children, which may include the consideration of prenatal exposures [11]
Objective
The NCS was designed to examine the effects of the environment—broadly defined to include factors such as air, water, diet, sound, family dynamics, community, and cultural influences— and genetics on the growth, development, and health of children across the United States. The NCS was designed to follow approximately 100,000 children, some from before birth, through age 21 years. The NCS planned to collect comprehensive information to:
- contribute to improving the health and well-being of all children
- deepen our understanding of the contribution of various factors to a range of health and disease outcomes
- understand factors that lead to health disparities.
With this broad perspective, the NCS was designed to contribute to the implementation of health equity, where each individual has an opportunity to realize their health potential. [12]
Discontinued
The NCS was in its Vanguard, or pilot phase, which was designed to assess the feasibility, acceptability, cost, and utility of Study scientific output, logistics, and operations prior to initiating the Main Study. The Vanguard Study enrolled about 5,000 children in 40 counties across the United States. General recruitment was completed in July 2013.
On December 12, 2014, the National Children's Study closed, after an expert review committee advised the NIH Director that moving forward with the larger Main Study would not be the best way to add to the understanding of how environmental and genetic factors influence child health and development. [13]
Duane Alexander was an American medical doctor who was the director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development from 1986 through 2009. In 2009 he moved to the position of senior scientific advisor to the Director of the NIH's Fogarty International Center.
Susan Shurin is a senior adviser at the National Cancer Institute. From 2006–2014, she served as Deputy and Acting Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health.
Data Sharing for Demographic Research (DSDR) advances research on maternal and child health and the life course by making data discoverable and accessible for secondary analysis. DSDR is a research data and information repository that adheres to the FAIR principals. DSDR focuses on data with external validity that can be generalized to populations.
The Rare Diseases Clinical Research Network (RDCRN) is an initiative of the US Office of Rare Diseases Research (ORDR). RDCRN is funded by the ORDR, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and collaborating institute centers. The RDCRN is designed to advance medical research on rare diseases by providing support for clinical studies and facilitating collaboration, study enrollment and data sharing. Through the RDCRN consortia, physician scientists and their multidisciplinary teams work together with patient advocacy groups to study more than 200 rare diseases at sites across the nation.
The Pediatric Trials Network (PTN) is a consortium of clinical research sites located around the United States that are cooperating in the design and conduct of clinical trials to improve health care for young patients. The network is sponsored by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).
Diana W. Bianchi is the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a post often called “the nation’s pediatrician.” She is a medical geneticist and neonatologist noted for her research on fetal cell microchimerism and prenatal testing. Bianchi had previously been the Natalie V. Zucker Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics, and Gynecology at Tufts University School of Medicine and founder and executive director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center. She also has served as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center.
Yoke Peng Loh is an American biochemist and molecular biologist currently acting as Senior Investigator and Head at the Section on Cellular Neurobiology, Laboratory of Developmental Neurobiology, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH). She earned a B.S. in biochemistry at University College Dublin in 1969 and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. She did her postdoctoral work with Harold Gainer at NIH and at the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
Judith L. Vaitukaitis was a reproductive neuroendocrinologist and clinical researcher who played a key role in developing a biochemical assay in the early 1970s that ultimately led to the creation of the home pregnancy test. She served for 12 years as director of the US National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Rachel Schneerson is a former senior investigator in the Laboratory in Developmental and Molecular Immunity and head of the Section on Bacterial Disease Pathogens and Immunity within the Laboratory at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development within the National Institutes of Health. She is best known for her development of the vaccine against bacterial meningitis with her colleague John B. Robbins.
Yvonne T. Maddox is an American academic who currently works as vice president for research at the Uniformed Services University. She was previously the acting director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. Her career at the National Institutes of Health also includes previous leadership roles as acting deputy director of the National Institutes of Health and deputy director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Keiko Ozato is a Japanese American geneticist whose research has focused on gene regulation in the developing immune system; She is best known for her contributions to immunogenetics and epigenetics in isolating the IRF8 transcription factor that aids humans in fighting off disease and for identifying the BRD4 protein that regulates cellular and viral genes that can invoke epigenetic memory. She is Senior Investigator at the Section on Molecular Genetics of Immunity at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Ida Stephens Owens was an American scientist known for her work with drug-detoxifying enzymes. She received her Ph.D from Duke University in 1967, making her one of the first two African Americans to receive a doctorate from the school. She spent her career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where she worked from 1968 to 2017 and pioneered the study of the genetics of human diseases and drug metabolism.
Melissa A. Parisi is an American geneticist and physician. She is chief of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch at the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development.
Marian Doberman Willinger is an American scientist. She was a program officer at the National Institutes of Health where she expanded maternal and child health initiatives.
Della Marie Hann is an American psychologist and research administrator serving as the associate director for extramural research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Alison Nenos Cernich is an American neuropsychologist specializing in traumatic brain injury and computerized neuropsychological assessment. She is the deputy director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Cernich was previously deputy director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, assistant professor of neurology at University of Maryland School of Medicine, and chief of neuropsychology at the VA Maryland Health Care System.
Germaine M. Buck Louis was the Dean of the George Mason University College of Health and Human Services and professor in Mason’s Department of Global and Community Health. She lead the College in becoming Virginia's first accredited College of Public Health prior to her retirement in 2022. Her expertise focuses on environmental exposures and human health, particularly human reproduction and pregnancy. Prior to her appointment as dean at George Mason in 2017, she was the founding Director for the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Cuilin Zhang is a Chinese-American epidemiologist and physician-scientist researching the roles of genetic and environmental factors in the pathogenesis of gestational diabetes, type 2 diabetes, and obesity and health consequences of these complications. Zhang is a senior investigator and acting chief of the epidemiology branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Tracey Ann Rouault is an American rheumatologist and physician-scientist who researches mammalian iron-sulfur proteins. Rouault is a senior investigator at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and she heads the section on human iron metabolism.
Paul Ernest Love is an American physician and Immunologist. He is a senior investigator and head of the Section on Hematopoiesis and Lymphocyte Biology at Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. His research focus is in the area of mammalian hematopoiesis.
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
