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

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study is the largest long-term study of child health andbrain development in the US, consisting of a Coordinating Center, a Data Analysis and Informatics ResourceCenter, and 21 research sites. The ABCD Study has enrolled a diverse cohort of 11,878 9-10-year-olds andwill continue to track their biological and behavioral development through adolescence into young adulthood.All participants receive neuroimaging, neuropsychological testing, bioassays, and detailed youth and parentassessments 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 toreduce viral spread. Many parents incurred changes in work (e.g., working-from-home, longer shifts, reducedwages, job loss). Some services and support systems became disrupted. And, the number of confirmed casesand deaths have continued to surge. The massive multifaceted impact of this unprecedented event has thepotential 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 inthe study. In this proposal, we will capitalize on funded (NSF; PI Tapert) and pending supplements toadminister 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-levelCOVID-19 impacts. For participants' neighborhoods (e.g., census tract, county, state), we will geocodemeasures of incidence, spatial distancing, changes in (un)employment, and timing of implementation of stateand/or local policies on mitigation practices. By collecting this situational information at the family andcommunity levels as soon as possible, we can use existing ABCD data to examine perturbations indevelopmental trajectories of brain functioning, cognition, substance use, academic achievement, socialfunctioning, and physical and mental health. Specifically, we will (1) focus on characterizing the nature andvariability 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 ofCOVID-19 differentially influence stress, cognition, and mental health during and after the pandemic. We willanalyze (1) the interactions between family- and community-specific impacts on ABCD participants' immediatestress and mental health during the pandemic, (2) the extent to which such potential impacts are associatedwith each other, and (3) how both community and family factors (e.g., SES, neighborhood characteristics) mayserve as protective factors. This unprecedented crisis provides an opportunity to exploit ABCD's infrastructureand scientific rigor to discern critical dimensions of development not previously envisioned.