The CARING for Children with COVID program is led by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). This program leverages the clinical networks of NICHD, NHLBI, and NIAID to research SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and related conditions, including multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).
More information about the clinical networks is available in the following sections and more details about the research they are conducting is available on the Research page.
Collaborating Institutes
About NHLBI: NHLBI is the global leader in conducting and supporting research in heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders that advances scientific knowledge, improves public health, and saves lives. For more information, visit https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov.
About NICHD: NICHD leads research and training to understand human development, improve reproductive health, enhance the lives of children and adolescents, and optimize abilities for all. For more information, visit https://www.nichd.nih.gov.
About NIAID: NIAID conducts and supports research — at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide — to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available at https://www.niaid.nih.gov/.
Research Overview
Networks Conducting Prospective Longitudinal CARING Cohort Studies
Collaboration among the participating NIH institutes on prospective longitudinal studies enables alignment among the following networks studying SARS-CoV-2 infection in children as part of the CARING for Children with COVID program:
- Pediatric Heart Network (PHN) funded by NHLBI
- Pediatric Trials Network Pharmacokinetics of Understudied Drugs administered to Children per Standard of Care (PTN) funded by NICHD
- Pediatric Research Immune Network on SARS-CoV-2 and MIS-C (PRISM) funded by NIAID
Data from CARING’s prospective longitudinal studies will be available through three cloud-based, interoperable data ecosystems to leverage existing resources and to facilitate data analysis and comparisons. Datasets on these platforms will be made widely available to allow more researchers to conduct additional analyses and make more discoveries.
- NHLBI’s BioData Catalyst cloud-based ecosystem
- Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center
- NIAID’s ImmPort Shared Data
Some data are already available and more data is expected this year. More information about CARING for Children with COVID data ecosystems is available on the Research page.
CARING Cohort Translational Research
Predicting Viral-Associated Inflammatory Disease Severity in Children with Laboratory Diagnostics and Artificial Intelligence (PreVAIL kIds) is supported through NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics – radical (RADxSM-rad) initiative and led by NICHD. These data will be made available through the forthcoming RADx Data Hub.
Read more about CARING for Children with COVID research on the Research page.
Support for CARING Research
Research conducted as part of the CARING for Children with COVID effort is supported in part by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or the "CARES Act” and by the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, 2020.
Coordination of CARING with Other NIH Institutes and Centers and Non-NIH Groups
Other NIH-supported research to better understand the impacts of SARS-CoV-2 infection and the COVID-19 pandemic on children is underway. To learn more about some of these groups and their efforts, go to the Related Activities page.