Maternal Health

FS2 evaluates the diagnostic accuracy and implementation feasibility of an AI-assisted blind-sweep obstetric ultrasound (SPAQ E-con AI), operated by trained non-specialist health workers, for antenatal screening in rural Democratic Republic of the Congo. Primary outcomes are gestational age mean absolute error (Trimester 2 and Trimester 3) with 95% confidence intervals and AI confidence calibration. The reference standard is manual measurement by a reference reader (early ultrasound first; manual BPD if unavailable; last menstrual period is not used). Target enrollment is approximately 1,430 (IRB-approved ceiling 3,000), with early termination permitted upon achievement of pre-specified analysis-plan thresholds. The study is a multi-center prospective Hybrid Type 1 Effectiveness-Implementation design and includes a pre-specified adaptive model-update (Batch 2 cut) plan following FDA PCCP and STARD-AI guidance.

The goal of this clinical trial is to test the effectiveness of evidence-based Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) among adult patients who screen positive to one or more risky alcohol or substance use behaviors while seeking care at a sexual and reproductive health (SRH) clinic. The main questions it aims to answer are: * Does SBIRT impact patients' alcohol and substance use, SRH, mental health, physical health, quality of life, and wellbeing? * Does SBIRT effectiveness differ by ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, gender, and urbanicity? * Does SBIRT effectiveness differ by delivery mode (in-person vs. telemedicine)? Participants will receive in-person and telemedicine SBIRT, or usual care. Participants will complete surveys at interviews at baseline, 30 days, and 3 months. Researchers will compare patients who received SBIRT to patients who receive usual care to see if patients who receive the SBIRT intervention have a greater reduction in negative outcomes as compared to those who receive usual care. In this setting, usual care consists of basic quantity and frequency questions asked inconsistently as part of the admission process and varying by provider, with no standardized approach to screening, treatment, follow-up, or referral.

Preeclampsia, affecting 2-8% of pregnancies globally, is a leading hypertensive disorder in pregnancy. It is clinically characterized by elevated blood pressure (≥140/90 mmHg) after the 20th gestational week, often accompanied by proteinuria and systemic complications such as thrombocytopenia, liver dysfunction, and cerebral symptoms. This condition poses significant risks for both maternal and fetal health, increasing the likelihood of organ damage, preterm birth, and long-term cardiovascular and neurodevelopmental complications. Non-pharmacological interventions, including relaxation techniques, have been explored for symptom management. Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) has shown efficacy in reducing stress, anxiety, and blood pressure. Recently, virtual reality (VR)-based relaxation techniques have gained attention for enhancing stress relief and improving health outcomes. This study aims to compare the effects of VR-based PMR with in-person PMR on maternal and fetal outcomes in preeclamptic pregnancies.

This quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study aimed to evaluate the effect of artificial intelligence-assisted climate change education on pregnant women's climate change concerns and awareness. The study will be conducted with pregnant women attending a pregnancy school, and participants will be assigned to intervention and control groups. The intervention group will receive AI-supported climate change education in addition to routine training, while the control group will receive only routine education. Data will be collected using the Climate Change Anxiety Scale and the Maternal-Fetal Health Awareness of Climate Change Scale. The findings are expected to contribute to improving pregnant women's awareness and reducing concerns related to climate change through innovative educational approaches.

This project-also known as "Accountability for Care through Undoing Racism \& Equity for Moms" or ACURE4Moms-aims to reduce Black-White maternal health disparities using multi-level interventions designed to decrease bias in prenatal care, improve care coordination, and increase social support. ACURE4Moms is a pragmatic 4-arm cluster randomized controlled trial conducted with 39 prenatal practices across North Carolina. Practices have been randomly assigned to receive either: Arm 1 (Standard Care): North Carolina Medicaid Care management for high-risk pregnancies; Arm 2 (Data Accountability and Transparency): North Carolina Medicaid Care Management + Practice-level Data Accountability interventions; Arm 3 (Community-Based Doula Support): North Carolina Medicaid Care Management + Community-Based Doula support intervention for high-risk patients during pregnancy and postpartum; or Arm 4 (Data Accountability and Transparency + Community-Based Doula Support): North Carolina Medicaid Care Management + Both Arms 2 and 3 interventions. During each practice's 2-year intervention period, the practice will initiate prenatal care for \~750-1,500 patients (up to 60,000 patients total), whose outcomes the investigators will follow and compare between arms until all these patients have reached 1-year post-delivery.

This randomized controlled trial aims to evaluate the effects of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program on birth memory and perception of traumatic birth among women who have undergone vaginal delivery. The study will be conducted between July and October 2025 at Malatya Training and Research Hospital. Participants in the intervention group will attend an 8-week MBSR program, while the control group will receive no intervention. Data will be collected using validated scales before and after the intervention. The primary outcomes are changes in birth memory and traumatic birth perception scores.

Prenatal Mindfulness training (MT) shows promise as a preventive intervention against hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) and may reduce risk for offspring cardiovascular disease (CVD). One proposed mechanism of MT to reduced CVD risk is improved self-regulation following stress. Perhaps the most crucial contributor to the development of self-regulation in the first year is the psychophysiological coregulatory relationship between mother and infant. However, this self-and co-regulation among women exposed to prenatal MT has not been studied and has yet to be examined in relation to CVD risk. The goal of this proposed project is to evaluate maternal-infant physiological reactivity to and recovery from stress at 6 months postpartum following prenatal MT, and to examine the relationship between these maternal infant stress responses and maternal-infant CVD risk at 12 months postpartum. Using a lab-based stress paradigm and well-validated biomarkers of mother and infant CVD risk, the investigators will assess respiratory sinus arrhythmia and heart rate at 6 months postpartum for 40 mother-infant dyads who have completed either prenatal MT or a usual care arm of an RCT examining MT for women at risk for HDP. The investigators will compare maternal, infant, and dyadic stress responses by treatment arm. Then, cardiac stress responses will be examined as predictors of maternal and infant biomarkers of CVD risk at 12 months postpartum.

The investigators want to learn how women's diets may impact breastfeeding outcomes. This study will help the investigators learn more about how diet and social factors like food access may impact mothers' health, breastfeeding, and their baby's health. Participants will attend a visit before birth, then 11 visits as their baby grows up. All visits will be remote using RedCap, phone or video call, text messaging or any other communication modalities of preference to the participant. The investigators will ask for personal information about participants' family, home, and finances, health literacy, medical history, current medications, pregnancy complications, mental health (depression, quality of life), confidence in breastfeeding, eating habits, and plan to feed their baby. After childbirth, the investigators will ask about participants' delivery and child's health, and request access to their child's medical records. Across all visits, the investigators will ask participants to measure their weight, height, blood pressure, activity and sleep, and child's length; the investigators will also ask them to ship urine, stool, and breast milk samples. The investigators will obtain a 24-hour feeding log for the child, as well as a log of what the mother ate and drank over 24 hours.

Postpartum depression (PPD) is a frequent complication of the postnatal period but remains underdetected in routine clinical practice. This prospective clinical study, conducted at the high-risk pregnancy clinic of the CHUM, aims to estimate the prevalence of PPD among patients seen in postpartum follow-up. It also assesses the feasibility of implementing a standardized screening protocol that combines the administration of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) with a clinical decision-support algorithm to guide appropriate medical follow-up. The study also seeks to explore clinical characteristics associated with higher EPDS scores.

This study aims to address critical diagnostic and data gaps in tuberculosis (TB) care among pregnant and postpartum women in Guinea-Bissau, a high-burden, resource-limited setting. Recognising that current TB screening during antenatal care (ANC) relies largely on unstructured symptom questions, the study will integrate more systematic and innovative approaches into routine maternal health services. The project will implement the Bandim TBscore II as a structured triage tool to classify symptom severity and guide referrals. To strengthen diagnostic capacity, two novel tools will be evaluated: stool-based GeneXpert testing (a method recommended in children and explored here as a feasible alternative for pregnant women) and artificial intelligence-powered chest X-ray interpretation software designed to enhance TB detection where radiological expertise is lacking. The study will also generate comprehensive, population-based data on TB and TB infection (TBI) among pregnant, postpartum women and women of reproductive age in Guinea-Bissau. The results are intended to inform health policy, both locally and in high-income countries, by providing evidence to improve TB screening protocols and care for this vulnerable group. Ultimately, the study seeks to develop scalable strategies that can be replicated across low- and middle-income countries to advance maternal and child health and support global TB eradication efforts.

The aim of this study is to conduct a comparative effectiveness evaluation using a randomized control trail design among diverse women to compare two postpartum care models: 1) Telehealth Multicomponent Optimal Model (Telehealth MOM) and 2) enhanced standard of care (ESoC). This study will address critical gaps in knowledge about how best to deliver comprehensive postpartum care that ensures timely identification and treatment of complications and meets the needs and preferences of diverse patients, including disproportionately-impacted racial groups and rural residents.

This study will assess the impact of virtual doula care on birth and postnatal outcomes among rural mothers. The goal of virtual doula services is to improve access to care in underserved communities and decrease urban-rural differences in key maternal health outcomes including mode of birth (cesarean vs vaginal) and birth satisfaction. By implementing a digital randomized controlled trial, the study team will efficiently recruit a national sample of rural pregnant women to provide evidence of the effectiveness of virtual doula care, the appropriateness of virtual visits for different care and support needs, and the role of virtual care in improving maternal health.

Detailed Description The doula-led intervention developed during the first phase of this project will be pilot tested for feasibility. Following the recruitment procedures described in the recruitment and retention plan, approximately 75 participants will be enrolled into the study. Twenty-five of the participants will receive regular doula care and 25 of the participants will receive care from a doula trained in the PMAD doula training throughout their pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum time period, following the intervention procedures developed in Aim 2 of this study. Twenty-five women will not receive care from a doula and will receive perinatal care as usual. Women in all groups will take surveys via REDCap during their enrollment in the intervention, at 1 month postpartum, 3 months, and 6 months postpartum (at the conclusion of the intervention). All participants who receive the PMAD doula intervention will complete checklists after each session with their doula, to assess fidelity to the intervention. Participant communication with their doula via patient notebook will also be assessed for fidelity to the intervention.

Research Aim 1: Determine the effectiveness of PROMOTE vs. usual care to increase patients' receipt of counseling about workplace accommodations and pregnancy. Investigators will recruit and randomize Obstetric providers to the PROMOTE intervention or usual care. The investigators will compare the frequency of EHR documented work- related counseling and adherence to employer documentation recommendations between the two study arms. Hypothesis: Patients receiving care by a provider randomized to PROMOTE will have higher rates of documented counseling about work and pregnancy. Research Aim 2: Determine the effectiveness of PROMOTE vs. usual care to reduce undesired wage or advancement reduction, increase accommodation requests granted, and improve maternal-infant health. The investigators will recruit a racially and socioeconomically diverse cohort of 304 pregnant patients and compare responses to surveys and qualitative interviews about work experiences and EHR-documented maternal-infant health outcomes among patients receiving care by providers randomized to PROMOTE vs. usual care. Hypothesis: Compared to patients receiving care by providers randomized to usual care, participants receiving care by providers randomized to PROMOTE will have less undesired loss of wages and advancement, increased accommodation request granted, and improved maternal-infant health during pregnancy.

Cesarean section (C-section) rates have increased worldwide, and Egypt is among the countries with the highest rates. In some hospitals, more than half of all births are done by cesarean delivery. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends using the "Robson Ten Group Classification System" to better understand and compare C-section rates. This study will use the Robson classification system to evaluate the rate of cesarean deliveries in two hospitals in Assiut, Egypt: Assiut University Hospital and Assiut General Hospital. The study will collect information from medical records of women who delivered by cesarean section between January and December 2026. The main goal is to identify which groups of women contribute most to the high C-section rate and to compare practices between the two hospitals. The study will also look at outcomes for both mothers and newborns. By doing this, we hope to provide useful information that can help improve obstetric care, reduce unnecessary cesarean deliveries, and improve health outcomes for mothers and babies in Egypt.

Early life exposures may lead to adverse effects on health in later life. The Boston birth Cohort study is designed to study a broad array of early life factors and their effects on maternal and child health outcomes.

The overarching goal of the ARCH Survey is to establish a prospective longitudinal pregnancy surveillance study in Lusaka, Zambia, to precisely characterize the pregnancy rate and outcomes of women of reproductive age prior to, during, and following pregnancy and to investigate the structural, sociodemographic, and clinical covariates that contribute to adverse outcomes in each reproductive epoch.

The purpose of this study is to examine the intervention effectiveness and dissemination of digital health care delivery models for improving selected health outcomes in the Medicaid population.

In this proposed study, the investigators hope to assess the quality of recovery after delivery in a local population that would take into account physiological and psychological parameters to better understand the recovery process after delivery. The investigators will identify risk factors, especially those that are modifiable and associated with a poorer ObsQoR score and hence a poor quality of recovery after delivery. This data may then be used to educate women and manage expectations in the postpartum period, and help develop potential therapeutic interventions.

High maternal mortality is a major public health problem in many settings. Because of low antenatal care (ANC) and skilled birth usage, Ugandan women and their children suffer from high maternal and perinatal mortality. The investigators developed a promising intervention (Support-Moms app) that shares targeted health information, and engages social support networks through scheduled reminders to help support pregnant women to utilize maternity services in rural Uganda. The investigators now propose to test and implement the Support-Moms intervention and hypothesize that Support-Moms will be feasible and cost-effective in improving utilization of available maternity care services, and ultimately reduce maternal and perinatal mortality.