Understanding How Early Life Experiences Affect Children's Health

The ECHO Measurement Core: A Framework and Resource for Assessing Environmental Exposure and Child Health

NIH-funded research Northwestern University · NIH-11115685

This project helps create better ways to measure how environmental factors influence the health and development of children.

Quick facts

Grant typeNIH-funded research
Study typeNIH-funded research
Funding institutionNorthwestern University NIH-funded
Lab location1 site (Chicago, United States)
Project IDNIH-11115685 on NIH RePORTER

What this research studies

Our environment plays a big role in our health throughout life, starting from childhood. This project is building a system to carefully and accurately measure how early life experiences and surroundings affect children's health and development. We are creating and improving tools to collect information in a way that is sensitive to different cultures and easy for families to participate in. This work supports a larger effort to understand these connections, helping to ensure that the information gathered from children and families is reliable and useful for future health discoveries.

Who could benefit from this research

Good fit: This project primarily benefits the broader community of children and families participating in the larger ECHO Cohort by ensuring high-quality data collection.

Not a fit: Patients not involved in the ECHO Cohort or similar large-scale environmental health studies may not directly benefit from this specific measurement development work.

Why it matters

Potential benefit: If successful, this work will lead to more accurate and comprehensive data collection in child health studies, ultimately improving our understanding of how to protect children from harmful environmental exposures.

How similar studies have performed: This project builds upon existing methods for measuring environmental exposures and child health, refining them for a large-scale, coordinated national cohort.

Where this research is happening

Chicago, United States

Researchers

About this research

  1. This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
  2. Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
  3. For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page below.
Last reviewed 2026-06-13 by the Find a Trial editorial team. Information on this page is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Always consult qualified healthcare professionals about clinical trial participation.