COVID

ECHO Researchers Showcased Child Health Research at Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting

Posted on by Jodi Snare

Updated May 10, 2022

ECHO researchers Michael O’Shea, MD, MPH of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Elisabeth McGowan, MD of the Woman & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island showcased ECHO research at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) Annual Meeting in Denver, CO. The 5-day PAS Meeting featured presentations, posters, and exhibitions from physicians and researchers sharing the latest advancements in pediatric health. In addition to the in-person events, PAS registrants had access to on-demand, pre-recorded presentations and a bank of e-posters.

ECHO-related Sessions:

Michael O’Shea, MD, MPH

ECHO Program Cohorts of Individuals Born Preterm: Five Year Progress Report
Sunday, April 24, 2022, 10-11:30 AM MT (12-1:30 PM ET)

Dr. O’Shea led a session highlighting the research findings coming out of three ECHO cohorts that have enrolled preterm infants—including the Developmental Impact of NICU Exposure (DINE), Neonatal Neurobehavior and Outcomes in Very Preterm Infants (NOVI), and Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn (ELGAN) cohorts. The session reviewed some of the key findings that have come out of the wealth of child health data these cohorts have collected over the past 5 years. Dr. O’Shea was joined by Dr. McGowan along with ECHO investigators Judy Aschner, MD, Todd Everson, PhD, Rebecca Fry, PhD, Carmen Marsit, PhD, and Annemarie Stroustrup, MD, MPH.

 

 

Elisabeth McGowan, MD

Evaluating Prenatal and Perinatal Factors Associated with Neurobehavior in Preterm and Full-term Infants
Sunday, April 24, 2022, 9-9:15 AM MT (11-11:15 AM ET)

Dr. McGowan presented on the results of collaborative ECHO research investigating the link between pre- and perinatal factors and infant neurobehavioral outcomes (e.g., reflexes, behavior, signs of stress).

Healthcare Utilization during COVID-19 Pandemic among Children Born Preterm
Sunday, April 24, 2022, 3:30-6 PM MT (5:30-8 PM ET)

Dr. McGowan also presented a poster on collaborative, ECHO-wide research analyzing how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the healthcare resources utilized by preterm infants.

NIH Program Study Links COVID-19 Pandemic Hardships to Child Life Satisfaction

Posted on by Jodi Snare

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Courtney K. Blackwell, PhD

Families who faced more hardships related to the COVID-19 pandemic had higher levels of both caregiver and child stress and lower child life satisfaction, according to a new National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded study. However, being more socially connected and engaged with family promoted life satisfaction for children of all ages.

The study included more than 1,600 families from 30 U.S. states. For younger children, family engagement decreased the negative effect of COVID-19 pandemic-related stress on life satisfaction. For adolescents, pre-existing anxiety and/or depression increased their risk for lower life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtney K. Blackwell, Ph.D. of Northwestern University, an investigator in the NIH Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, led this collaborative research effort. The article, titled “Youth well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic,” is published in Pediatrics.

The researchers used survey data from 14 ECHO cohorts across the U.S. to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic-related family hardships on caregiver and child stress, and understand how stress, social connection, family engagement, and pre-existing mental health conditions affect children’s life satisfaction.

“The findings demonstrate ways families can cope with adverse events and promote their children’s well-being through family engagement and fostering peer social connectedness,” Blackwell said. “They also show that stress and well-being are not direct opposites, suggesting the need for future interventions that target both decreasing children’s stress and improving their well-being.”

Blackwell, C. et al. Youth well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pediatrics. DOI 10.1542/peds.2021-054754 (2022)

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About ECHO: ECHO is a nationwide research program supported by the NIH. Launched in 2016, ECHO aims to enhance the health of children for generations to come. ECHO investigators study the effects of a broad range of early environmental influences on child health and development. The program consists of two major components, including 69 existing and ongoing observational study cohorts and a pediatric clinical trials network. For more information, visit echochildren.org.

About the NIH: NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

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Families Who Had More COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Hardships Had More Stress, Lower Child Life Satisfaction

<< Back to Research Summaries

Families Who Had More COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Hardships Had More Stress, Lower Child Life Satisfaction

Author(s): Courtney K. Blackwell, et al.

 

Who sponsored this study?

This research was supported by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, Office of The Director, National Institutes of Health, with co-funding from the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR).

Footnote: The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

 

What were the study results?

Families with more COVID-19 pandemic-related hardships had higher levels of caregiver and child stress and lower child life satisfaction. Children who had higher levels of social connection and family engagement had better life satisfaction. For younger children, family engagement also decreased the negative effect of stress on life satisfaction. For adolescents, having anxiety and/or depression was a risk factor associated with lower life satisfaction during the pandemic.

Footnote: Results reported here are for a single study. Other or future studies may provide new information or different results. You should not make changes to your health without first consulting your healthcare professional.

 

What was the study's impact?

This study demonstrated the different ways caregivers, children, and adolescents have coped with stress and adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of this study highlight the importance of family engagement and peer social connection in promoting children’s well-being during adverse events. This study also showed that stress and well-being are not direct opposites, suggesting the need for interventions that can both decrease children’s stress and improve their well-being.

 

Why was this study needed?

Families have faced many challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, but we don’t yet know much about how these challenges have impacted children’s mental health. While negative mental health outcomes are important to research, it is just as important to understand what helps children maintain positive mental health during hard times. This study investigated how the impact of COVID-19 pandemic-related family hardships have affected child and adolescent well-being and identified factors that can improve and protect their well-being during difficult times.

 

Who was involved?

This study surveyed 977 caregivers of children ages 2 to 12 from 11 ECHO cohorts and 669 adolescents ages 11-17 and their caregivers from five ECHO cohorts. These participants came from 30 U.S. states.

 

What happened during the study?

The researchers collected survey data from May 2020 to May 2021. These surveys asked each participant about their family’s COVID-19 pandemic experience. The researchers combined data from the different cohorts to look at how pandemic-related sources of stress (also called “hardships”) were related to caregiver and child stress, and how stress, social connection, family engagement, and pre-existing mental health conditions related to children’s life satisfaction.

 

What happens next?

The next steps for this research include looking at which specific COVID-19 family hardships have the most impact on caregiver and child stress and well-being so that we can design more specific interventions.

 

Where can I learn more?

Access the full journal article, titled “Youth well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic” in Pediatrics.

 The content is the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Published: March 18, 2022

 

Read the associated news article.

Download this summary

Families Who Had More COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Hardships Had More Stress, Lower Child Life Satisfaction

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Creating a Common Way to Score Adult Depression

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ECHO Researchers Investigate Youth Well-being During Covid-19

Posted on by Jodi Snare

Courtney K. Blackwell, PhD
Courtney K. Blackwell, PhD

Between May 2020 and May 2021, ECHO conducted collaborative research led by Person Reported Outcomes (PRO) Core investigator Courtney K. Blackwell, PhD of Northwestern University to investigate COVID-19 pandemic-related family hardships associated with child stress and well-being. This research, titled “Youth well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic,” is published in Pediatrics.

The results of this study demonstrated that families who faced more hardships related to the COVID-19 pandemic had higher levels of both caregiver and child stress and lower child life satisfaction. However, being more socially connected to peers and engaging in family activities led to higher life satisfaction overall. The researchers found that for younger children, family engagement decreased the negative effect of COVID-19 pandemic-related stress on their life satisfaction. For adolescents, pre-existing anxiety and/or depression increased their risk for lower life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, families have faced hardships and interruptions to their daily lives. These disruptions are likely to have a lasting effect on the well-being of children, but the extent of this effect is still unknown. Additionally, little is known about how families can protect their children from COVID-19 pandemic-related stress and promote their positive mental health.

To conduct this research, Dr. Blackwell and her team surveyed more than 1,600 families from 30 US states about their COVID-19 pandemic experience. This study included both parent-reported surveys on children aged 2-12 years and self-reported surveys on adolescents aged 11-17 years. The researchers used survey data from 14 ECHO cohorts across the US to evaluate how COVID-19 pandemic-related family hardships have affected caregiver and child stress, and how stress, social connection, family engagement, and pre-existing mental health conditions have affected children’s life satisfaction.

The study findings demonstrate some of the varied ways that families can cope with adverse events and promote their children’s well-being through family engagement and fostering peer social connectedness. “This study also showed that stress and well-being are not direct opposites,” said Dr. Blackwell, “suggesting the need for future interventions that target both decreasing children’s stress and improving their well-being rather than one or the other.”

The next steps for this research include focusing in on specific COVID-19-related family hardships in order to identify the hardships that contribute the most to child stress and develop targeted strategies for improving child well-being.

Read the research summary.

ECHO Program’s Response to COVID-19

Posted on by Jodi Snare

Updated January 25, 2021

ECHO’s approach to innovative research practices in the era of COVID-19

As the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to affect communities across the world, ECHO is committed to protecting the health and safety of its staff and participants while advancing our research mission of enhancing the health of children for generations to come. In addition to following guidance from our national and local governments, many of our studies have, at least temporarily, limited activities to those they can do at a distance.

In response, ECHO researchers are working together to find innovative approaches to keep research going remotely.

Many ECHO Cohorts are moving toward collecting data from a distance. Fortunately, the ECHO-wide Cohort Data Collection Protocol includes online, mail, and phone surveys, as well as remote sample collection. Like the ECHO Cohorts, the ECHO IDeA States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network (ISPCTN) paused ongoing clinical trials in early Spring 2020, but has resumed with a shift toward remote research tools for informed consent, interventions, and data and sample collection.

In these ways, ECHO is responding to the ongoing pandemic by introducing new ways of conducting research, some of which may continue once the pandemic subsides.

ECHO’s contribution to COVID-19 research

ECHO is also joining with researchers around the world to contribute to understanding how COVID-19 affects pregnant women and children.

ECHO researchers are working together in record time to incorporate COVID-19 research in ongoing and new studies. This work is being led by a COVID-19 task force for ECHO ISPCTN and a COVID-19 working group for ECHO Cohorts.

The ISPCTN task force, chaired by Paul Palumbo, MD, includes eight members with a range of expertise such as pediatric infectious diseases, perinatal transmission of disease, and vaccine delivery. The task force is identifying specific COVID-19-related intervention trials that this network of rural and underserved children could mount.

The ECHO Cohorts rapidly produced COVID-19-specific questions that are now part of the ECHO-wide Cohort Data Collection Protocol.  To be maximally useful for other researchers, two public NIH websites feature these questionnaires: https://dr2.nlm.nih.gov and https://www.phenxtoolkit.org/covid19.

During the summer of 2020, the NIH Program Office issued a Notice of Special Interest to encourage and foster time-sensitive ECHO-wide Cohort science related to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, NIH funded six projects, which include participation from 24 ECHO Pediatric Cohorts or Centers. Co-chaired by Kaja LeWinn, ScD and Leonardo Trasande, MD, MPP, the ECHO Cohorts COVID-19 Working Group continues to facilitate implementation of these new projects, and to foster other COVID-19 related research questions that the ECHO cohorts are uniquely suited to address.

ECHO COVID-19 Projects

  • Amplification of racial and social inequalities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Impacts on child positive health outcomes
    • Aim 1: Examine if long term racial/ethnic inequities in sociodemographic resources contribute to more COVID-19 hardships and higher levels of school and social disruptions within communities of color.
    • Aim 2: Examine independent and joint impacts of COVID-19 hardships, school practices, and children’s emotional support on 4-18-year-old’s positive health, as measured by academic competence and well-being.
  • Microbial Mediators of the Impact of Maternal Psychosocial Stress on Perinatal and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes
    • Aim 1: Determine the impact of a) maternal SARS-CoV-2 infection and b) psycho-social stress during the COVID-19 pandemic on length of gestation. We will also consider whether the maternal vaginal or fecal microbiomes in pregnancy mediate this relationship using whole shotgun metagenomic sequencing.
    • Aim 2: Determine the impact of maternal psychosocial stress on infant neurodevelopment and if alterations in infant gut microbiota during the first nine months of life mediate this association.
  • Examining the impact of societal changes during the COVID-19 pandemic on obesity related behaviors
    • Aim 1: Compare diet, physical activity, screen time and sleep prior to versus during the pandemic, with a focus on identifying children at high risk for adverse changes.
    • Aim 2: Using a mixed method approach, examine families’ daily routines during the pandemic, and parent perceptions of how societal changes influence children’s behaviors.
  • Changes in environmental exposures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and impacts on child health outcomes
    • Aim 1: Environmental exposures and levels of stress have dramatically changed since March 2020 consequent to the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • Aim 2: These changes have influenced birth outcomes (e.g., birthweight, gestational age) and child respiratory outcomes (wheeze, asthma diagnoses).
    • Aim 3: Exposures and their associations with the outcomes of interest vary by: a) measures of familial stress; b) urban/rural residential location; and c) race/ethnicity. Changes in environmental exposures will be assessed using a questionnaire (all cohorts); silicon wristbands (subset of cohorts); and using urinary biomarkers (subset of cohorts).
  • Impact of COVID-19 and associated stressors on neurodevelopment in marginalized populations
    • Aim 1: Collect time-sensitive responses on stress and parenting in the participating cohorts.
    • Aim 2: Create an efficient remote data collection system and build capacity by expanding the range and quality of developmental screening and assessment conducted by community staff.
    • Aim 3: Optimize a system for routine, timely, and efficient transfer of data collected in the field to the NBCS/ECHO data portal.
  • SARS-CoV-2 stress, infection and immunity: associations with birth outcomes in three ECHO cohorts
    • Aim 1: Study associations of COVID-19 symptomatology, salivary RNA, and SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity with birth outcomes among pregnancies newly enrolled into ECHO.
      • Hypothesis 1. Symptoms consistent with the WHO probable case definition and SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity are associated with shortened gestation, consistent with possible hypercoagulability identified in COVID-19 cases.
    • Aim 2: Examine whether stress (assessed via questionnaire and cortisol measured in hair) modifies associations of COVID-19 case definition, salivary RNA, and SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity with birth.
      • Hypothesis 2. Stress augments effects of SARS-CoV-2 on birth outcomes.