The Global Brain Consortium’s GLAD White Paper: Challenges and Prospects for a Multi-National Children and Adolescents’ Brain Health Study

Abstract

Developmental brain health is paramount to the future of all society. As such, many western countries have heavily invested in several large-scale studies of brain development including the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, and the Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study. However, since brain development and brain determinants of health are multidimensional and variable, true advancement requires a broader sampling of our populations – a global effort beyond western countries. To this end, advancing global brain health science requires a large effort in developing measures and testing protocols, methodological approaches, theoretical perspectives and systems that have cross-cultural relevance, and can be employed to generate globally representative data to inform inclusive public health interventions. In this White Paper, we discuss the daunting challenges of population neuroscience with specific focus on children and adolescents. After an executive summary and a concise overview of the major issues yet to be resolved, we present the global longitudinal study on child and adolescent development (GLAD) initiative and explain how it could potentially be deployed to generate globally relevant data to optimize brain health in young people across diverse contexts. Throughout the document, we emphasize that to optimize children’s brain health, we need to foster strong collaboration among multiple stakeholders including researchers, clinicians, educators, policy experts, and funding organizations.