Sidebar: National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) - For More Information
"Our unifying theme is human development in all its aspects," explains NICHD director Duane Alexander. "We look across the spectrum from prenatal phenomena to pregnancy and perinatology to childhood diseases to learning and behavioral development."
Such breadth has always marked NICHD. In fact, it required an act of Congress in 1962 to establish an Institute of Health so unlike its predecessors, says Alexander. (At that time, government procedures prohibited double letters in official acronyms, thus the missing "H" in the institute's abbreviation.) High United States infant mortality rates, as well as President John F. Kennedy's experiences with his sister's mental retardation, sparked the institute's creation.
National Institute on Child Health and Human Development P.O. Box 29111 Washington, D.C. 20040 (301) 496-5133 Fax: (301) 496-7101 http://www. nichd.nih.gov For information on the more than 100 scientific and medical ...
