October 2024

On October 11, AERA submitted comments in response to a request for information (RFI) on the development of the 2025 strategic plan for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

The RFI sought input into the research goals, opportunities, and cross-cutting themes for the 2025 draft strategic plan. Several of the goals and opportunities reflect the current (2020-2024) NICHD strategic plan, with a new cross-cutting theme added for research training. AERA encouraged NICHD to build on overall efforts across the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that have included increased stipends and early-career support. In addition, AERA encouraged the explicit inclusion of broadening participation in a final strategic plan to address historic underrepresentation of populations and institutions on NICHD grants.

The AERA comments highlighted the need for NICHD to also focus on emerging topic areas since the release of the current strategic plan in 2019. AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine wrote, “We would encourage the addition of an aspirational goal to examine longer-term effects of COVID-19 on child development, particularly for those who were born or were infants during the height of the pandemic.”

The comments also encouraged maintaining several goals included in the 2020 strategic plan, such as NICHD support for research focusing on technology use and its impact on cognitive development.

The comments addressed opportunities for NICHD to partner with federal agencies, such as the Department of Education, in co-funding research in areas where there is alignment with the missions of both agencies. In addition, the comments encourage NICHD to note in the strategic plan the importance of investment in large-scale data infrastructure used in the social and behavioral sciences for population-level analyses that inform research in human development.

The final 2025 NICHD strategic plan is expected to be released by March 2025.