Opportunities and challenges for subfecundity research in ECHO

Key Takeaways: Since the advent of assisted reproduction, there have been questions about potential impacts on child health, with neurodevelopment being a particular focus of concern. One of the biggest challenges for research in this field has been confounding by indication, i.e., the difficulty of disaggregating the effect of the treatment itself from the underlying subfecundity that warranted it. In ECHO, we now have a suite of harmonized variables available that may help us to do just that. In this talk, Dr. Kahn will introduce these variables and describe an analysis in progress that is examining associations between subfecundity and child neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Assistant Professor, Department of Pediatrics and Population Health

NYU Grossman School of Medicine

Speaker Biography:

Dr. Kahn received her undergraduate degree from Yale and master’s in English from Columbia before embarking on a career as a book editor focusing on health and women’s studies. After 20 years, she returned to Columbia for her MPH in Population and Family Health and PhD in Epidemiology. She joined the Division of Environmental Pediatrics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine as a postdoc in 2017 and in 2021 was appointed Assistant Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Population Health.  Her research examines intersection between environmental chemical exposure and reproductive health and development.

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