Scientific Review Branch (SRB)

To review grant applications, SRB relies on eight subcommittees of the Child Health and Human Development (CHHD) IRG or, where appropriate, a special emphasis panel that is convened for its expertise in a specific area of science. The subcommittees of the CHHD IRG and the scientific areas reviewed within each subcommittee are as follows:

• Biobehavioral and Behavioral Sciences Subcommittee addresses issues such as biobehavioral bases of intellectual and developmental disabilities, social development, cognition, language, at-risk development, health and behavior, emotion, basic human behavior, socioeconomic context, culture, child abuse and neglect, neuropsychology, memory, attention, service delivery, attitudes, basic animal behavior, and policies related to these topics.
• Developmental Biology Subcommittee addresses issues such as biological bases of intellectual and developmental disabilities, molecular genetics, developmental genetics, developmental immunobiology, early embryonic development, teratology, cellular endocrinology, gene expression and therapy, developmental neurobiology, organogenesis, gastrulation, embryonic patterning, embryogenesis, cell biology, and cellular physiology and function.
• Function, Integration, and Rehabilitation Sciences Subcommittee addresses issues such as clinical aspects of plasticity; recovery and adaptation; limb and joint mechanics; coordination, balance, and mobility; functional impairment and disability; rehabilitative engineering; orthotics, prosthetics, and assistive devices; therapeutic exercise; secondary consequences of disabilities; behavioral and psychosocial adjustment to disease, injury, and chronic disability; functional assessments; and outcomes, participation, and societal barriers for individuals with disabilities.
• Health, Behavior, and Context Subcommittee addresses issues such as the relationships among health, health-related behavior, and environmental processes, conditions, and contexts; the effects of policy, neighborhood, community, school, cultural, parenting, and family influences on individual health, health-related behaviors, and health disparities; health conditions and behaviors, such as fitness, risky sexual behavior, substance use, violence, treatment-seeking, and adherence; health promotion, disease and injury prevention, health communication and education; and access to and use and delivery of health services.
• Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Biology Subcommittee addresses issues such as pregnancy, labor, preeclampsia, lactation, placental function, reproductive immunology, and HIV infection.
• Pediatrics Subcommittee addresses issues such as neonatology, perinatology, endocrinology, metabolism, nutrition and growth, pharmacology, epidemiology, pediatric critical care, pediatric infectious disease, and pediatrics (including birth defects).
• Population Sciences Subcommittee addresses issues such as marriage and family; mortality and morbidity; immigration; internal migration; population distribution; economic demography and labor force; ethnography; population and environment; and social, economic, and demographic aspects of fertility and contraception, sexual behavior, policy, child well-being, transition to adulthood, child abuse and neglect, disability, AIDS/HIV/STDs, race and ethnicity, health, neighborhoods, geographic information systems, and culture.
• Reproduction, Andrology, and Gynecology Subcommittee addresses issues such as reproductive biology, reproductive endocrinology, reproductive neuroendocrinology, reproductive genetics, andrology, gynecology, contraception, infertility, pelvic floor disorders, gametogenesis, fertilization, implantation, preimplantation embryo development, germ cell biology, embryonic stem cell biology, animal cloning, and sex determination.

• Biobehavioral and Behavioral Sciences Subcommittee
• Developmental Biology Subcommittee
• Function, Integration and Rehabilitation Sciences Subcommittee
• Health, Behavior and Context Subcommittee
• Obstetrics and Maternal-Fetal Biology Subcommittee
• Pediatrics Subcommittee
• Population Sciences Subcommittee
• Reproduction, Andrology and Gynecology Subcommittee
• Special Emphasis Panels