Happy New Year! In this first message, I highlight how the entire scientific community can use ECHO data to explore critical scientific questions in child health.

De-identified data from the ECHO Cohort are available to any qualified researcher through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Development (NICHD) Data and Specimen Hub (DASH). Over 60,000 ECHO Cohort participants have generously shared their data on this platform, including information about demographics, early development, environmental exposures, pregnancy and birth, and public health crises, as well as child health outcomes. I hope that a large number of scientists will use these data for teaching and research. I think they will be particularly fruitful for researchers in training, who often look for meaningful data to answer their research questions in a relatively short period of time.

This month’s spotlight story highlights one example of the richness of ECHO Cohort data available in DASH—data on nutrition. We know from animal experiments and smaller studies of human populations that diet early in development can have long-lasting consequences. Now, longitudinal ECHO data on over 25,000 pregnancies and over 25,000 children, from 34 states, are ready for researchers to explore questions of diet and child health in a nationwide sample. You can learn more in the January ECHO Connector about the publication that describes this nutritional resource and how researchers can request access to ECHO Cohort data in DASH.

—Matthew W. Gillman, MD, SM