# Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium Data Coordinating Center

> **NIH NIH U24** · WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY · 2021 · $4,499,999

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The landmark Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study will provide a representative reference data
resource to the scientific community enabling unprecedented investigation of neurodevelopment and the impact
of environmental, genetic, and biological factors on brain and behavioral health and developmental trajectories
from infancy through childhood. Through this study, the Healthy Brain and Child Development National
Consortium (HBCD-NC) will recruit and retain a sociodemographically diverse cohort of 7,500 pregnant women
from 24 sites across the U.S. and follow these families and their children through the first decade of life. Children
will undergo rigorous data collection across modalities including neuroimaging, neurophysiology, behavioral and
cognitive assessments, and collection of biospecimens via a balanced protocol developed by field-leading
experts. Building upon the substantive complementary experience and expertise of its multidisciplinary team and
leveraging multiple population-specific technical innovations, the Healthy Brain and Child Development National
Consortium Data Coordinating Center (HDCC) will provide the leadership, management, and oversight of data
collection, quality control, curation, processing, management, sharing, and analytics to facilitate and support the
activities of the HBCD-NC and ensure its success. Included is development and implementation of an optimized,
state-of-the-art MRI protocol harmonized for the first time in infants/toddlers across all three major vendors which
leverages the latest innovations in scanner technology with age-specific structural, microstructural, quantitative,
functional, and spectroscopy sequences. Also detailed is a targeted EEG protocol linked with a field-leading
automated processing pipeline for developmental EEG which provides innovative derivative measures. Data and
project management will occur through a centralized tracking and distribution platform linked to a high-throughput
compute backbone which overcomes limits of commercially-available systems for management and integrated
processing of multimodality data from large, multi-site studies. High performance computing will be supported
through unique access to a combination of field-leading resources. Detailed procedures are outlined for secure
collection, management, and analysis of personally identifiable information (PII) data, including flexible methods
designed to accommodate heterogeneity in electronic health record systems across sites. Finally, substantive
HBCD-specific enhancements to the Data Exploration and Analysis Portal (DEAP 2.0) will produce a crucial tool
for data access to authenticated users while promoting best practices in reproducible statistical analysis and
providing flexible computation without the need to download restricted-access data. The result of this field-
leading combination of HDCC resources will be a state-of-the-art, longitudinal data set of unparalleled scale
wh...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10381046
- **Project number:** 1U24DA055330-01
- **Recipient organization:** WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** ANDERS M DALE
- **Activity code:** U24 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $4,499,999
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-30 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10381046

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10381046, Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium Data Coordinating Center (1U24DA055330-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10381046. Licensed CC0.

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