Many recent studies have demonstrated that environmental contexts, both social and physical, have an important impact on child and adolescent neural and behavioral development. The adoption of geospatial methods, such as in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, has facilitated the exploration of many environmental contexts surrounding participants’ residential locations without creating additional burdens for research participants (i.e., youth and families) in neuroscience studies. However, as the number of linked databases increases, developing a framework that considers the various domains related to child and adolescent environments external to their home becomes crucial. Such a framework needs to identify structural contextual factors that may yield inequalities in children’s built and natural environments; these differences may, in turn, result in downstream negative effects on children from historically minoritized groups. In this paper, we develop such a framework – which we describe as the “adolescent neural urbanome” – and use it to categorize newly geocoded information incorporated into the ABCD Study by the Linked External Data (LED) Environment & Policy Working Group. We also highlight important relationships between the linked measures and describe possible applications of the Adolescent Neural Urbanome. Finally, we provide a number of recommendations and considerations regarding the responsible use and communication of these data, highlighting the potential harm to historically minoritized groups through their misuse.

最近的许多研究表明，社会和身体环境对儿童和青少年的神经和行为发育具有重要影响。地理空间方法的采用，例如青少年大脑认知发展（ABCD）研究，促进了对参与者居住地点周围的许多环境背景的探索，而不会给神经科学研究中的研究参与者（即青少年和家庭）带来额外的负担。然而，随着链接数据库数量的增加，开发一个考虑与儿童和青少年家庭外部环境相关的各个领域的框架变得至关重要。这样的框架需要确定可能在儿童的建筑环境和自然环境中产生不平等的结构性背景因素；这些差异反过来可能会对历史上属于少数群体的儿童造成下游负面影响。在本文中，我们开发了这样一个框架——我们将其描述为“青少年神经城市组”——并用它对链接外部数据 (LED) 环境与政策工作组纳入 ABCD 研究的新地理编码信息进行分类。我们还强调了相关测量之间的重要关系，并描述了青少年神经城市组的可能应用。最后，我们提供了一些关于负责任地使用和交流这些数据的建议和考虑因素，强调了滥用这些数据对历史上的少数群体的潜在危害。