News

Reducing infant mortality has been an important part of the NICHD mission since it was founded. Despite decades of research, however, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) remains the leading cause of death among infants between 1 month and 1 year of age in the United States, causing more than 2,000 infant deaths each year.

Breastfeeding provides many benefits for both mother and baby. The NICHD and other agencies and organizations encourage mothers to breastfeed their babies to capitalize on the many benefits it provides.

text4baby External Web Site Policy is a free service that delivers important health information about the stages of pregnancy and baby’s first year to the cell phones and mobile devices of moms-to-be and new moms. Since its launch in February 2010, the program has sent more than 62 million messages. With more than 500,000 subscribers, text4baby is the largest “app” of its kind.

For more than 30 years, a major goal of NICHD has been to reduce MTCT of HIV and other infections. Institute-supported research has identified practices and drug combinations that are very effective in preventing MTCT of HIV. As a result of this research, transmission rates in the United States have dropped to less than 1%.

On December 5, 2012, the NICHD released the Scientific Vision: The Next Decade, the culmination of a collaborative process that began in 2011 to identify the most promising scientific opportunities for the Institute and the research community to pursue over the next decade. The Vision statement was made available during the NICHD’s 50th anniversary colloquium.

​Alan Guttmacher, M.D., Director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) announced a number of changes to streamline the institute’s organizational structure and accelerate the exchange of scientific ideas.

A document charting a research course for the many collaborators who share an interest in promoting the science concerning human development through the life span, child health, women's health, and rehabilitation research is now available online.

As the Institute marks its golden anniversary, we look back on the NICHD's early years, its scientific accomplishments, and its future.

In 1994, the NICHD, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and other partners launched the Back to Sleep campaign, to inform parents and caregivers about ways to reduce the risk of SIDS, defined as the sudden, unexplained death of an infant younger than 1 year of age. Initially, the campaign focused on encouraging parents to put infants on their backs to sleep to reduce the risk of SIDS. Since the campaign began, U.S. SIDS rates have dropped by 50% overall and the rate of back sleeping has increased significantly. In fact among African Americans, and the rate of back sleeping among infants has tripled.

The process of breastfeeding does more than provide important nutrition and other things to support infants' growth and development; it also benefits mothers' health and offers an important opportunity for the pair to bond.

In June, the world marked the 30th anniversary of the first case of what is now known as AIDS. The NICHD Spotlight, 30 Years of Milestones, highlighted some of the key moments in pediatric, adolescent, and maternal AIDS research.

The Second Lecture in This Series Features NICHD Grantee Dr. Esther Duflo.

Pregnant women who are unaware that they have HIV miss the chance for drug treatment that can benefit not only their own health, but could also prevent them from transmitting the virus to their infants. When HIV is not diagnosed until women go into labor, their infants are usually treated soon after birth with the anti HIV drug zidovudine (ZDV), to prevent the infants from becoming infected with the virus.

On January 15, researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the NICHD launched the Promoting Maternal-Infant Survival Everywhere—or PROMISE—study.

This December, the NICHD joins the international community in recognizing the 21st annual AIDS Awareness Month. Research by the NICHD, several partner Institutes at NIH, and other organizations has helped change the outlook for those with HIV/AIDS in the United States and abroad. While it is good to reflect on how far we’ve come, the NICHD keeps its focus on the many challenges that remain for the future.

Each day, approximately 1,000 children—the majority of whom are newborns—become infected with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. HIV can be passed on during pregnancy or delivery, or even after the infant is born, through breastfeeding.

In many poor countries, mothers with HIV face a stark choice: to nurse their infants, and risk passing on HIV through their breast milk--or to formula feed, and deprive their infants of much of the natural immunity needed to protect against fatal diseases of early infancy. Now, two studies supported by the National Institutes of Health offer insights into preventing early death and HIV infection among breastfeeding infants of mothers with HIV in these countries.

After four weeks of age, infants who breast feed from mothers infected with HIV continue to be at risk for infection with HIV for as long as they breastfeed, according to an analysis conducted and funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health.

Full-term infants who are born small score an average of 11 points higher on IQ tests if they are exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life compared to those who are given formula or solids early on, according to findings published in the March Acta Paediatrica.

Breast feeding appears to be a minor factor in reducing the likelihood of childhood overweight, according to a study by the National Institute of Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and two other Federal agencies.