The UNC School of Medicine Office of Research, the UNC Medical Center, and the NC Translational and Clinical Sciences (NC TraCS) Institute have awarded two groups of researchers $50,000 Emerging Challenges in Biomedical Research (ECBR) grants.
A team led by Alison Stuebe, MD, associate professor of maternal-fetal medicine at UNC OB-GYN, and Ana Whitney, MS, population health project manager at UNC Health Care, will focus on various social determinants that affect maternal health throughout pregnancy and the first two years of motherhood.
The 1,000 days from conception to two years of age is a critical window for health and wellbeing for mothers and children. During this period, nutrition, chemical exposures, and social contexts interact with genetic traits and epigenetic processes to set health trajectories for life for both mother and child. Maternity care, then, is a critical window for personalized medicine to impact health across two generations. Social determinants of health (SDoH) are critical drivers of maternal and infant health outcomes. To address this unmet need, Stuebe and Whitney’s research team will engage patients and key stakeholders to form a strategy for implementing Epic@UNC’s new SDoH module in maternity care to assess and manage the delivery of precision health care across the UNC Health Care system.