ECHO PROGRAM MILESTONES
2023 -2030: Second Cycle of the ECHO Program
September 2025 - ECHO featured in the national media
A feature article in the Washington Post highlights ECHO participants who are helping researchers understand how chemical exposures during pregnancy and throughout the life course may influence pregnancy outcomes and child health.
September 2025 - Day-long symposium spotlights ECHO results and impacts
The inaugural ECHO Science to Action Symposium, a day-long exploration of how ECHO research is bringing research results into policy, takes place in Bethesda, Maryland with hundreds of people watching online. View the recording.
September 2025 - NIH funds continued research through ECHO ISPCTN
ECHO awards more than $13 million for intervention research into environmental influences on child health, continuing the work of the ECHO Institutional Development Award (IDeA) States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network (ISPCTN). The awards support institutions located in 18 IDeA eligible states to serve as clinical sites and a Data Coordinating and Operations Center for the ISPCTN.
July 2025 - The ECHO Cohort Ancillary Studies Process
A new process allows eligible investigators and their research teams to propose studies of non-publicly available data with limited personal identifiers from the ECHO Cohort Data Platform, with or without biospecimens from the ECHO Biorepository. A wide range of analyses are possible with an ECHO Cohort ancillary study.
January 2024 - Second Round of ECHO Public-Use Data is Released
This new release includes data on 63,215 ECHO Cohort participants. This release includes extra data from participants included in the initial release and adds data on participants enrolled in the ECHO Cohort between Sept. 1, 2021, and Aug. 31, 2022.
September 2023 - Second 7-Year Cycle of the ECHO Program Awarded
The ECHO Program in the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health makes 49 awards totaling over $157 million for the first year of the second seven-year cycle of the ECHO Cohort Consortium. As of September 2023, the ECHO Cohort has data from over 107,000 participants, which includes over 64,000 children.
2016 - 2023: First Cycle of the ECHO Program
November 2022 - First Public-Use Version of ECHO-Wide Cohort Data Available
De-identified new and extant ECHO data is made available through the Data and Specimen Hub (DASH), a centralized resource established by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) that allows researchers to share and access de-identified data from studies via a controlled-access mechanism.September 2022 - Key Study Results Published in Plain-Language
The ECHO Program publishes key study results on their website as part of ECHO's aims to promote wide and timely dissemination of summary research results with ECHO participants, ECHO staff, and the broader community.March 2022 - ECHO Program Reaches 1,000-Publication Milestone
ECHO Program investigators have published 1,000 papers in peer-reviewed journals. These publications span a broad spectrum of topics across ECHO's child health focus areas, highlighting our collaborative team approach to science. Sharing our science gives us the best opportunity to enhance child health.
June 2020 - Plain-Language Research Summaries Available
The ECHO Program adds plain-language research summaries of program-wide publications to its website. The new page continues the commitment to sharing results for ECHO Program studies.
June 2019 - First Sites Activated
The ECHO Program activates its first sites to begin data collection under the ECHO-wide Cohort Data Collection ProtocolFebruary 2019 - sIRB Approval Gives Greenlight to Start Research
Single institutional review board (sIRB) approval to begin its research under the ECHO-wide Cohort Data Collection Protocol.
April 2018 - Seven ECHO Program Manuscripts Published
Current Opinion in Pediatrics features seven manuscripts authored by and about the ECHO research program--one from each active ECHO Program Component, in the journal’s “Therapeutics and Toxicology” section.August 2017 - Public Input Solicited on Protocol
The ECHO-wide Cohort Data Collection Protocol is published publicly and the NIH solicits input from a wide variety of stakeholders by releasing a Request for Information (RFI).September 2016 - ECHO Program Launches
NIH launches the ECHO Program with more than 70 individual cohorts, or groups, of mothers and children from ongoing research projects. Researchers follow participants through different life stages, some starting before birth and through adolescence. Together, they form a massive virtual “cohort of cohorts” that includes more than 50,000 children from diverse backgrounds across the United States.