History of NIH Baby Toolbox Development
The National
Institutes of Health (NIH) formed a coalition called the Blueprint for Neuroscience
research with a goal to develop new tools, resources, and training opportunities to
accelerate the pace of discovery of neuroscience research.
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded the NIH Baby Toolbox contract to Northwestern University using NIH Blueprint funds. Dr. Richard Gershon, Principal Investigator, and a team of 48 researchers started work to develop a brief, standardized assessment of neuropsychological, cognitive and social assessment of infants and toddlers ages 1-42 months.
NIH Baby Toolbox began early validation.
Collected validation and normative data for the NIH Baby Toolbox tests aligned with the U.S. Census.
The analytics team for the NIH Baby Toolbox is developing scores and norms for the iPad-based tests. Public release is expected in early 2025
Special Research Projects
ECHO (Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes)
Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the ECHO Program represents a network of medical specialists, scientists, and scholars dedicated to enhancing the health of children for generations to come. The goal of the nationwide consortium is to understand the effects of a broad range of early environmental influences on child health and development. ECHO is committed to both learning what factors affect child health and to finding ways to enhance it, with aims to:
- Enhance the health of children and adolescents through research that may help inform healthcare practices, programs, and policies.
- Create a culture that helps teams of child health researchers work together to achieve the best results.
Mobile Toolbox
Funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the Mobile Toolbox project is a nationwide consortium designed to build a common platform on Android and iOS for cognitive assessment management and dynamic data analysis. Intended for administration in adults aged 20 to 85, this comprehensive smartphone app-based research platform aims to enable remote cognitive assessment to allow users to embed self-administered cognitive tests into research studies. These app-based cognitive assessment tools will help differentiate normal from abnormal cognitive change, furthering the understanding of pathological cognitive decline and facilitating the development of effective prevention and treatment strategies.
Read more about the Mobile Toolbox
Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study
The HBCD Study, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, is the largest long-term study of early brain and child development in the United States.