# 8/21 ABCD-USA CONSORTIUM: RESEARCH PROJECT SITE AT CHLA

> **NIH NIH U01** · CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF LOS ANGELES · 2020 · $180,234

## Abstract

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is the largest long-term study of child health and
brain development in the US, consisting of a Coordinating Center, a Data Analysis and Informatics Resource
Center, and 21 research sites. The ABCD Study has enrolled a diverse cohort of 11,878 9-10-year-olds and
will continue to track their biological and behavioral development through adolescence into young adulthood.
All participants receive neuroimaging, neuropsychological testing, bioassays, and detailed youth and parent
assessments of substance use, mental health, physical health, and culture and environment. In March 2020,
when our participants were ages 11-13, the world became substantially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,
leading to an upheaval in the economy and the lives of almost every family. Most U.S. schools closed to
reduce viral spread. Many parents incurred changes in work (e.g., working-from-home, longer shifts, reduced
wages, job loss). Some services and support systems became disrupted. And, the number of confirmed cases
and deaths have continued to surge. The massive multifaceted impact of this unprecedented event has the
potential to affect today’s children for decades to come. Here, we propose to leverage ABCD’s infrastructure,
cohort, and existing protocol to rapidly characterize the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on each child in
the study. In this proposal, we will capitalize on funded (NSF; PI Tapert) and pending supplements to
administer queries to all ABCD participants and their parents about the impact of the pandemic on their lives
(family level impact) by also incorporating publicly and privately available measures of community-level
COVID-19 impacts. For participants’ neighborhoods (e.g., census tract, county, state), we will geocode
measures of incidence, spatial distancing, changes in (un)employment, and timing of implementation of state
and/or local policies on mitigation practices. By collecting this situational information at the family and
community levels as soon as possible, we can use existing ABCD data to examine perturbations in
developmental trajectories of brain functioning, cognition, substance use, academic achievement, social
functioning, and physical and mental health. Specifically, we will (1) focus on characterizing the nature and
variability of the community and regional impact of COVID-19, based on geocoding of ABCD participants’
neighborhoods (i.e., current home address) and (2) determine how community-level and family-level impacts of
COVID-19 differentially influence stress, cognition, and mental health during and after the pandemic. We will
analyze (1) the interactions between family- and community-specific impacts on ABCD participants’ immediate
stress and mental health during the pandemic, (2) the extent to which such potential impacts are associated
with each other, and (3) how both community and family factors (e.g., SES, neighborhood characteristics) may
serve as protective f...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10157918
- **Project number:** 3U01DA041048-06S1
- **Recipient organization:** CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL OF LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Megan Marie Herting
- **Activity code:** U01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $180,234
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2015-09-30 → 2027-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10157918

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10157918, 8/21 ABCD-USA CONSORTIUM: RESEARCH PROJECT SITE AT CHLA (3U01DA041048-06S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10157918. Licensed CC0.

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