TABLE 3.

Challenges and opportunities in detecting impact of Wellness-4–2 on reduction of neurodevelopmental vulnerability to mental health problems during infancy

Challenge	Opportunity
1. Mental health frameworks have traditionally not been applied to babies	1. Accelerate capacity to detect prenatal intervention effects on mental health risk in close proximity to intervention delivery and identify malleable targets at the very early phase of the clinical sequence
2. Mechanisms at the maternal-fetal interface in stress-related neurodevelopmental research are poorly understood	2. Elucidating mechanisms by which maternal prenatal stress affects fetal and neonatal health will serve as a mechanistic bridge between exposure and neurodevelopment
3. Few neuroimaging studies have emphasized engagement of culturally diverse populations, especially in longitudinal studies	3. Melding neuroscientific and community-engaged approaches can generate culturally sensitive protocols to enhance representativeness of neurodevelopmental research
4. Knowledge to Action (KTA) Gap: Robust evidence links’ adverse exposure and mental health risk but unknown whether improving the fetal environment will reduce risk	4. Closing the KTA gap: Demonstrate causal relation via experimentally altering gestational environment and specify those features of dysregulation that are malleable to prenatal intervention