The goal of the ECHO Program is to understand the effects of a broad range of early environmental influences on child health and development.

One key way that we do this is by providing de-identified data about ECHO Cohort participants so that the larger scientific community can discover new insights about public health.

As of February 2025, researchers have access to even more of this ECHO data.

Important Note: In May 2025, NICHD began the process of migrating DASH to a new platform. For the next several months, the DASH website will be unable to support new submissions, requests, or downloads.

What ECHO Cohort Data Can Researchers Find on DASH?

The latest release of de-identified public-use data from the ECHO Cohort is available through the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Data and Specimen Hub (DASH).

This release provides data on 71,380 ECHO Cohort participants. This release adds extra data from participants included in previous releases as well as data on participants enrolled in the ECHO Cohort Study between Sept. 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2023.

Researchers can request ECHO data such as demographic information, environmental exposure data, pregnancy and birth information, and more.

Also available are harmonized data for:

• Household chemical exposure for the child and during pregnancy
• Child strengths and difficulties questionnaire
• Perceived stress scale
• Caregiver general cognition
• Child blood pressure
• Early childhood education
• Public assistance
• Bioassay results regarding chemicals such as flame retardants, metals and metalloids, tobacco metabolites, fungicides and herbicides, and other analytes.

How to Request the ECHO Data

1. Create a DASH account and submit a Data Request Form. If you had
   access to the first release of ECHO data on DASH, you will need to
   submit a new request for access to this release.
2. The NICHD DASH Data Access Committee will review your request and
   respond within three weeks.
3. Use the data for three years. DASH will notify you three months before
   your DASH Data Use Agreement expires and a renewal request can be
   submitted at that time.
4. You must include acknowledgment of NICHD DASH in any publications, and you will be required to submit an annual report to help NICHD determine the effectiveness of DASH. See below for details.
5. See the DASH Tutorial for more detailed information on the process.

ECHO Cohort data is available on DASH at https://dash.nichd.nih.gov/study/424643

Annual Report

Recipients of NICHD DASH data are required to submit an annual report with the following:

1. Summary of accomplishments, including a list of oral or written presentations, disclosures, abstracts, publications, patents, practical applications, or inventions resulting from the approved use of the Data
2. For Non-research Use, a summary of the outcome from practical applications
3. Publication number (or a copy) of any published patent application for newly discovered or developed technologies
4. Any updates to the list of Affiliates and/or Associates.

Acknowledgement

Recipients of NICHD DASH data are required to include the following acknowledgment in your manuscripts:

The data used in this report is supported by the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) program, Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, under the following awards: U24OD023382 [Data Analysis Center]; U2COD023375 [Coordinating Center]; U24OD023319 [Participant Reported Outcomes (PRO) Core]; UH3OD023251, UH3OD023320, UH3OD023332, UH3OD023287, UH3OD023253, UH3OD023248, UH3OD023313, UH3OD023328, UH3OD023318, UH3OD023279, UH3OD023289, UH3OD023282, UH3OD023290, UH3OD023365, UH3OD023244, UH3OD023275, UH3OD023271, UH3OD023285, UH3OD023347, UH3OD023389, UH3OD023344, UH3OD023342, UH3OD023288, UH3OD023349, UH3OD023286, UH3OD023348, UH3OD023272, UH3OD023249, UH3OD023305, UH3OD023268, UH3OD023337 [ECHO Cohorts]; and U2CES026544, U2CES030857, U2CES026542, U2CES026533, U2CES026561, U24ES026539, U2CES026555 [Human Health Exposure Analysis Resource Core]. These data are from the second public release from this ongoing study.