Abstract
The US National Institutes of Health-funded Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program brings together 69 cohorts and over 57,000 children from across the nation to address five key pediatric outcome areas with high public health impact: pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes; upper and lower airway health; obesity; neurodevelopment; and positive health. We describe (1) the ECHO Program infrastructure that was designed to facilitate collaboration across over 1200 investigators and support the development of a cohort-wide data collection protocol and (2) the many challenges that were overcome in rapidly launching this large-scale program. Guided by a commitment to transparency, team science, and end user stakeholder engagement, ECHO successfully launched a unified study protocol and is working across disciplines to generate high-impact, solution-oriented research to improve children’s lives for generations to come.
Impact
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Many children in the United States experience chronic health conditions or do not reach their developmental potential.
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The Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program brings together 69 existing cohort studies comprising over 57,000 children to identify modifiable aspects of the early environment associated with pediatric outcomes with high public health impact: pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes; upper and lower airway health; obesity; neurodevelopment; and positive health.
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We describe the collaborative, team science-informed approach by which over 1200 investigators convened to form the ECHO Program and foster solution-oriented research to improve the health of children for generations to come.
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References
Smith, B., Knox, S. & Benjamin, D. K. Jr. Coordination of the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes program: so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Curr. Opin. Pediatr. 30, 263–268 (2018).
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the innumerable contributions of the entire ECHO scientific and stakeholder community. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the chairs and members of the following ECHO groups who led much of the work that serves as the foundation of this article: the Protocol Working Group, the Protocol Implementation and Evaluation Committee, the Publications Committee, the Stakeholder Engagement Working Group, the Team Science Working Group, and the Strategic Planning Task Force. We would also like to thank Christina Park, Leslie Thomson, James Gern, Rebecca Fry, Mike O’Shea, Bennett Leventhal, Beth Harris, David Cella, Courtney Blackwell, Kate Sauder, Charlie Barone, and Rebekah Yeager for their critical review of the manuscript. The authors wish to thank our ECHO colleagues, the medical, nursing and program staff, as well as the children and families participating in the ECHO cohorts. We also acknowledge the contribution of the following ECHO program collaborators: Coordinating Center: Duke Clinical Research Institute, Durham, North Carolina: P.B. Smith, K.L. Newby, D.K. Benjamin.
Funding
Research reported in this publication was supported by the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health, under Award Numbers U2COD023375 (Coordinating Center), U24OD023382 (Data Analysis Center), and U24 ES026539; U2C ES026533; U2C ES026542; U2C ES026544; U2C ES030857; U2C ES026555; U2C ES026561; U24 OD023319; UH3 OD023244; UH3 OD023248; UH3 OD023249; UH3 OD023251; UH3 OD023253; UH3 OD023268; UH3 OD023271; UH3 OD023272; UH3 OD023275; UH3 OD023279; UH3 OD023282; UH3 OD023285; UH3 OD023286; UH3 OD023287; UH3 OD023288; UH3 OD023289; UH3 OD023290; UH3 OD023305; UH3 OD023313; UH3 OD023318; UH3 OD023320; UH3 OD023328; UH3 OD023332; UH3 OD023337; UH3 OD023342; UH3 OD023344; UH3 OD023347; UH3 OD023348; UH3 OD023349; UH3 OD023365; UH3 OD023389. Dr. LeWinn was supported by award UH3 OD023271, Ms. Carretta and Mrs. Anderson by U2C OD023375, Dr. Davis by UG1 HD090849, and Dr. Oken by UH3 OD023286. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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LeWinn, K.Z., Caretta, E., Davis, A. et al. SPR perspectives: Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program: overcoming challenges to generate engaged, multidisciplinary science. Pediatr Res 92, 1262–1269 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-021-01598-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-021-01598-0
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