Pregnancy complications are increasing in the United States, and this is worse for Black patients, who are 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy than White patients. Pregnancy complications and deaths cause large physical, social, and financial burdens for patients and their families. Our study aims to decrease pregnancy complications for all patients, but especially for Black patients, by decreasing institutional racism and bias in healthcare and improving community-based social support during pregnancy.

The purpose of this study is to understand if there are core differences present in the brain imaging scans of a fetus who has a limb difference. These imaging scans will be completed before and after the birth of the child. This study will also allow us to counsel families and provide education on the specified limb difference.

We are conducting a study to understand how diverse pregnant people make decisions about prenatal diagnosis when fetal anomalies are present. We will be conducting semi-structured interviews of individuals that have been in the above clinical situation to better understand how personal, community, and systems-level factors impact their decision making. We will also be studying the longitudinal impact of receiving genetic information during pregnancy, particularly among those that have undergone exome or genome sequencing for prenatal diagnosis.

This study seeks to understand the strategies that were used in North Carolina to overcome the barriers and leverage the facilitators to extending Medicaid coverage for perinatal doula services and what remains to be done so that other states may benefit from the NC experience.

The objective of this study is to design and develop AMMI, the Analytics and Machine-learning for Maternal health Interventions. AMMI is designed to develop and deploy a machine learning-enhanced health technology system to address healthcare gaps, with the ultimate goal of mitigating risks of maternal mortality in African-American women.

The goal of this study is to uncover the frequency of low oxygen levels during sleep in pregnant women that have severe sickle cell disease. These women have a high risk of complications during pregnancy, and low oxygen levels might contribute to the complications. Therefore, finding and treating low oxygen can be impactful. The study will also look at blood cells and assess how low oxygen affects them.

Analyze biospecimens and conduct analyses on the association between endocrine disrupting chemicals and child neurodevelopment and growth.

To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a statewide intervention to promote alternatives to incarcerations and evidence-based approaches to the treatment of pregnant and postpartum people experiencing incarceration and substance use disorder, we are conducting a virtual training for NC jail staff and will conduct pre- and post-training evaluations to assess knowledge gained about the topic.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are seeking input from community members interested in joining a Community Advisory Board (CAB) with a focus on improving knowledge around the impacts of extreme weather-related disasters and healthcare access. The purpose of this CAB is to ensure the proposed research remains relevant and useful to the broader community in all phases of research - from forming partnerships to using research results to inform policy and advocacy actions.

This study aims to further explore the connection between postpartum support and maternal mental health, infant outcomes, and mother-child bonding in the newborn period.