News from NYU Langone Health
NYU Langone Receives $12.5M Grant for Digital Program to Address Maternal Mortality
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*Crain’s Health Pulse, October 18, 2023 – NYU Langone Receives $12.5M Grant for Digital Program to Address Maternal Mortality
Researchers at the NYU Langone Institute for Excellence in Health Equity have received a five-year, $12.5 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to implement a digital program designed to address maternal mortality disparities, NYU announced Monday.
The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute created the Maternal Health Community Implementation Project in 2021 with the goal of reversing growing national mortality trends, including higher death rates among Black women compared to white women and a sharply increasing rate among Hispanic women. The project supports four coalitions that engage communities to implement solutions, with NYU’s Institute for Excellence in Health Equity being one of them.
The grant will help researchers launch an adapted version of a supportive nutrition and lifestyle counseling program for pregnant women originally developed by two team members at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. The altered program, called JustMothers, will deliver pregnancy information to individuals through automated, culturally relevant text messages with video links, according to NYU. Community health workers will host live one-on-one and group sessions as well.
Natasha Williams, an associate professor at the Institute for Excellence in Health Equity, will be the principal investigator of the study. Williams said researchers will look to compare the strategies used in the JustMothers program and that the study aims to meet patients' needs, remove obstacles to in-person care and address social determinants of health, Williams said. Community health partners will work with mothers on a daily basis and inform how the program is adapted before launch, she added.
“While we are focused on healthy lifestyles and nutrition, lifestyle counseling intervention that provide education and counseling for diet and exercise… It's also crucial to acknowledge that these disparities have existed for decades. The maternal mortality rates are not solely due to individual choices or behavior,” she added.
Researchers are meeting with clinic and community partners to do planning work and developing workflows to implement the program, Williams said, and according to NYU they will assess its impact across New York City Health + Hospitals and Family Health Centers at NYU Langone in Sunset Park and Flatbush.
The investigators will enroll 900 pregnant women in the study before December of this year. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health. —J.N.
