[6] He was appointed Director of Center for Child Health, Behavior, and Development at Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute in 2005, and he is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
As part of a popular TEDx talk, Christakis spoke regarding the newborn brain and media exposure on children.
[13][14][15] He has appeared frequently in public media to talk about screen exposure and the benefits of manual play (and other topics) in children.
[16] And his research was also instrumental in calling into question the efficacy of "Baby Einstein" (and similar) videos; his group's research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, found that "for every hour a child 8 to 16 months old watched educational videos, they understood six to eight fewer words than their peers.
[27] In 2010, Christakis received the Research Award for Lifetime Contribution by the Academic Pediatric Association, and, in 2018, he was elected as Member of Washington State Academy of Sciences.