To review grant applications, the DSR 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.