The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study was the largest long-term study of child health and brain development in the US, consisting of a Coordinating Center, a Data Analysis and Informatics Resource Center, and 21 research sites. The ABCD Study enrolled a diverse cohort of 11,878 9-10-year-olds and tracked their biological and behavioral development through adolescence into young adulthood. All participants received neuroimaging, neuropsychological testing, bioassays, and detailed youth and parent assessments of substance use, mental health, physical health, and culture and environment. 

In March 2020, when participants were ages 11-13, the world became substantially affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to upheaval in the economy and the lives of almost every family. Most U.S. schools closed to reduce viral spread. Many parents incurred changes in work (e.g., working-from-home, longer shifts, reduced wages, job loss). Some services and support systems became disrupted, and the number of confirmed cases and deaths continued to surge. The massive multifaceted impact of this unprecedented event had the potential to affect children for decades to come.

The study leveraged ABCD’s infrastructure, cohort, and existing protocol to rapidly characterize the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on each child in the study. The project capitalized on funded (NSF; PI Tapert) and pending supplements to administer queries to all ABCD participants and their parents about the impact of the pandemic on their lives (family-level impact) by incorporating publicly and privately available measures of community-level COVID-19 impacts. For participants’ neighborhoods (e.g., census tract, county, state), geocoded measures of incidence, spatial distancing, changes in (un)employment, and timing of implementation of state and/or local policies on mitigation practices were incorporated. By collecting situational information at the family and community levels as soon as possible, existing ABCD data were used to examine perturbations in developmental trajectories of brain functioning, cognition, substance use, academic achievement, social functioning, and physical and mental health.