News & Updates

Released in January, the NICHD Strategic Plan 2025 lays out updated priorities to guide the institute’s research over the next five years. While our five major research goals are unchanged, we made substantial updates to reflect shifts in public health priorities and the evolution of new technologies.

Each year, NICHD reflects on selected highlights from the past 12 months that demonstrate how public investment in research drives scientific progress and benefits human health. In 2024, NICHD research expanded knowledge of and enhanced care in women’s health, fetal and pediatric health, disabilities, rehabilitation, and more.

Read about select research advances supported by NICHD in 2024, including work on women’s health, child and adolescent health, medical rehabilitation, health disparities, and more.

Adoption of standards for pediatric care in emergency rooms could save 2,000 lives each year, ranging from no cost to $11.84 per child.

As children head back to school, they must adapt to new routines and social situations. From expanding knowledge about sleep to assessing strategies to prevent school violence, NICHD research helps contribute to a safe and healthy learning environment.

Summer’s long days and warm weather allow for more time spent outdoors, benefiting physical and mental health. But heat also can have harmful health effects, and outdoor recreation carries the risk of injuries. NICHD research seeks to understand the impacts of climate change, prevent drownings, and help ensure safe participation in summer sports.

To avoid radiation exposure, researchers developed prediction strategies to prevent pediatric trauma patients from receiving unneeded CT scans, which slightly increase the risk for radiation induced cancers.

In 2023, NICHD continued its commitment to research to understand human development, improve reproductive health, promote women’s health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. Highlights include steps toward reducing the global burden of maternal sepsis and establishing a standard treatment for opioid-exposed newborns.

As we ring in 2024, we’d like to take a brief look back on our accomplishments during 2023. These activities illustrate the institute’s continued commitment to research and training in its mission areas.

This collaboration will promote safe infant sleep with and within American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

NIH announced the launch of the design phase of a public-private partnership addressing the lack of medical devices designed and approved for children in the United States. In this initial phase, NIH and partners will develop a detailed plan to build and launch a partnership that will bring together the resources of U.S. government agencies and private sector organizations, including industry and non-profits.

The effects of climate change on health are wide-ranging, from causing injuries and other medical concerns to disrupting vital supply chains. NICHD is committed to supporting scientific research to reduce climate-related health threats among its populations of interest—children, people of reproductive age, and people with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Children with concussion, or mild traumatic brain injury, were no more likely to experience a drop in IQ scores after their injury than were children who received injuries to the muscles or bones, according to a study funded in part by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The findings suggest that concussion is unlikely to affect children’s intelligence in the long term, providing reassurance to caregivers of pediatric concussion patients.

With its longer days and warmer temperatures, summer is an ideal season for outdoor recreation. But fun activities like swimming also carry the risk of injuries, especially among children. NICHD supports a broad spectrum of research that seeks to prevent and treat pediatric injuries from drowning to dog bites.

A new smartphone app may improve early recognition of physical child abuse. By applying an evidence-based strategy developed with NICHD support, the app can help healthcare providers and social workers evaluate bruising on children younger than 4 years of age and identify cases that may need further investigation for child abuse.

Children with multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C)—a rare condition linked with the virus that causes COVID-19—have biochemical indicators of cell injury and cell death that are distinct from other children with COVID-19, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Emergency departments that have the highest levels of coordination of health care, personnel, procedures and medical equipment needed to care for ill and injured children have far higher rates of survival than hospitals with low readiness, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Researchers found that more than 1,400 children’s deaths may have been prevented if hospital emergency departments had adopted national pediatric care readiness standards as laid out by the National Pediatric Readiness Project. The six-year study of 983 emergency departments in 11 states followed nearly 800,000 children.

Children and teens injured by a firearm were 50% more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder in the year after the injury, compared to children and teens injured in a motor vehicle crash, according to an analysis of medical records funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings suggest that firearm injuries may increase the risk for mental health disorders more than other kinds of traumatic injuries and that children injured by firearms may benefit from mental health screening.

Read about NICHD’s research findings and activities from 2022.

Poverty, combined with other types of adversity in early childhood, is associated with greater chances of premature death in adulthood, compared to other adverse childhood experiences, according to a study of more than 46,000 people by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.