Family Environment, Neurodevelopmental Risk, and the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Initiative: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Nicole R Bush; Lauren S Wakschlag; Kaja Z LeWinn; Irva Hertz-Picciotto; Sara S Nozadi; Sarah Pieper; Johnnye Lewis; Dominik Biezonski; Clancy Blair; Julianna Deardorff; Jenae M Neiderhiser; Leslie D Leve; Amy J Elliott; Cristiane S Duarte; Claudia Lugo-Candelas; T Michael O'Shea; Lyndsay A Avalos; Grier P Page; Jonathan Posner

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00547

Family Environment, Neurodevelopmental Risk, and the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Initiative: Looking Back and Moving Forward

Front Psychiatry. 2020 Jun 19:11:547. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00547. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nicole R Bush^{1

2}, Lauren S Wakschlag³, Kaja Z LeWinn¹, Irva Hertz-Picciotto⁴, Sara S Nozadi⁵, Sarah Pieper⁶, Johnnye Lewis⁵, Dominik Biezonski⁶, Clancy Blair⁷, Julianna Deardorff⁸, Jenae M Neiderhiser⁹, Leslie D Leve¹⁰, Amy J Elliott¹¹, Cristiane S Duarte⁶, Claudia Lugo-Candelas⁶, T Michael O'Shea¹², Lyndsay A Avalos¹³, Grier P Page¹⁴, Jonathan Posner⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States.
² Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States.
³ Department of Medical Social Sciences and Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences, Northwestern University, Chicago, Il, United States.
⁴ Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States.
⁵ Community Environmental Health Program, College of Pharmacy, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM, United States.
⁶ Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, United States.
⁷ Department of Population Health, New York University, New York, NY, United States.
⁸ Community Health Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States.
⁹ Department of Psychology, Penn State University, University Park, PA, United States.
¹⁰ Prevention Science Institute, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, United States.
¹¹ Center for Pediatric and Community Research, Avera Research Institute, Sioux Falls, SD, United States.
¹² Department of Pediatrics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States.
¹³ Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, CA, United States.
¹⁴ Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, RTI, Atlanta, GA, United States.

Abstract

The family environment, with all its complexity and diverse components, plays a critical role in shaping neurodevelopmental outcomes in children. Herein we review several domains of the family environment (family socioeconomic status, family composition and home environment, parenting behaviors and interaction styles, parental mental health and functioning, and parental substance use) and discuss how these domains influence neurodevelopment, with particular emphasis on mental health outcomes. We also highlight a new initiative launched by the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program. We discuss the role that ECHO will play in advancing our understanding of the impact of the family environment on children's risk for psychiatric outcomes. Lastly, we conclude with important unanswered questions and controversies in this area of research, highlighting how ECHO will contribute to resolving these gaps in our understanding, clarifying relationships between the family environment and children's mental health.

Keywords: family; fetal programming; home; neurodevelopment; parenting.

Publication types

Review

Abstract

Publication types

Grants and funding