Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO)-wide Cohort - 2nd Release

The National Institutes of Health launched the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) initiative in September 2016. The Program focuses on five pediatric outcome areas: obesity, neurodevelopment, upper and lower airways, pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes, and positive health. The ECHO-wide Cohort Study, presented here, incorporates longitudinal data on a growing 30,000 pregnancies and 50,000 children from 69 pediatric cohorts to investigate how exposure to environmental factors — including physical, chemical, biological, social, behavioral, natural, and built environments — impact child health and development. By bringing data together into one large ECHO-wide Cohort, scientists can address questions that no single cohort, or a few working together, can answer. Most of the cohorts existed prior to ECHO, bringing a wealth of extant data for compilation and harmonization, in addition to standardized collection of new essential and recommended data elements.