Neighborhood characteristics and neurodevelopment: Risk and protective factors, and susceptibility to stressors and school disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic

Project Summary Neighborhoods are an important ecological context for child and adolescent development and a social determinant of physical health, mental health, and school achievement. Research has begun to elucidate the associations between neighborhood disadvantage and brain structure, function, and behavior in relation to executive function (EF) emotion regulation (ER), and emotional processing which may contribute to these short- and long- term differences in health and development. Nevertheless, there are no population-based studies that have examined the relation between neighborhood disadvantage, and changes in neighborhood disadvantage, with longitudinal changes in neurodevelopment to determine if differences widen, narrow, or remain stable during adolescence, a potential sensitive period. Moreover, there has been limited consideration of how associations may vary across the country, and thus if they are of widespread importance. In addition, neighborhood risk may increase vulnerability to major stressors and disruptions in schooling, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. These COVID-19 related changes have disproportionately impacted disadvantaged communities and may exacerbate neighborhood-related differences in underlying neurodevelopmental systems. Finally, it is important to understand resilience, and the modifiable contextual factors that may protect against both neighborhood disadvantage and the impact of COVID-19. This proposal will use the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, an ongoing longitudinal study that is uniquely suited to address these questions. The ABCD Study enrolled a diverse cohort of 9-10-year-old children (n = 11,878) across 21 U.S. sites, contains multimodal measures of neurodevelopment for EF, ER, and emotional processing and rich measures of family, school, and neighborhood contexts, as well integrated rapid measurement of COVID-19 related impacts. This study will capitalize on the staggered timing of the pandemic onset in the ABCD cohort, which occurred between varying waves of data collection across participants. This creates a quasi-experimental design with the study separated into a pre-pandemic and post-pandemic onset phase. In the pre-pandemic phase, we will determine the association between neighborhood disadvantage, and neighborhood change, with longitudinal change in brain and behavioral development (Aim 1). Second, we will examine if the COVID-19 pandemic, and associated stressors and school disruptions, are associated with brain and behavior change, and exacerbate neighborhood related differences, with pre-pandemic measures serving as controls for post-COVID-19 measures. (Aim 2). Finally, we will elucidate the modifiable family, community and school factors that serve as moderators and foster resilience (Aim 3). This study will thus identify potential neurodevelopmental pathways related to neighborhood disadvantage and COVID-19, and identify modifiable contextual factors that are potential targets for policy and programmatic interventions to ameliorate disparities in health and well-being, and the disparate impact of COVID-19, while informing prevention strategies for subsequent pandemics or disasters.