News

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

NIH today 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.

In 2020, firearm-related injuries surpassed motor vehicle crashes to become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States. Dr. Bianchi highlights NICHD-supported research to prevent firearm violence and reduce the related deaths, injuries, and trauma.

Clinical research networks bring together scientists, clinicians, and community stakeholders to identify important clinical questions and design and conduct high-quality studies to answer them. Scientific evidence generated by such studies can impact clinical care, as several recent findings from NICHD’s networks demonstrate.

Read about NICHD’s research findings and activities from 2021.

The newly published 2021 NIH Research Plan on Rehabilitation reflects advances since the previous plan was released in 2016 and new directions that will help guide rehabilitation research across NIH for the next five years.

As we usher in November and Thanksgiving, it’s a fitting time to reflect on NICHD’s commitment to research on nutrition.

A program providing new parents with one to three home visits from a nurse soon after the birth of a child was associated with 39% fewer child protective service investigations for maltreatment through age five, compared to parents who received usual newborn services, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Families receiving the visits also had 33% fewer emergency department visits.

A federally funded study has verified that a set of measures designed to improve treatment of children in hospital emergency departments helps to reduce the pediatric death rate in these centers. Compared to children treated in emergency departments that scored lowest on implementing the measures, children treated in emergency departments that scored highest were 42% less likely to die. The authors concluded that the findings support emergency departments adopting these standards to improve care for children.

Preliminary data from NICHD-funded researchers provides caregiver-reported information on how children and teens fared during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Institutes of Health has launched a new research effort to understand how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, affects children, who account for roughly 13% of the total cases of COVID-19 in the United States. The effort is called the Collaboration to Assess Risk and Identify LoNG-term Outcomes for Children with COVID (CARING for Children with COVID).