Breastfeeding Exclusive New Year 2020 - Maternal Health Grant
New funding aims to ‘re-engineer postnatal care’ for improved health outcomes
Researchers at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Maternal and Child Health Department and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, in collaboration with partners at North Carolina State University and The Ohio State University, have received a $2.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality at the United States Department of Health and Human Services to improve health care services for new families after childbirth and the transition home. CGBI Research Associate, Kristin Tully, PhD, and Gillings School of Global Public Health Infant and Young Child Feeding Distinguished Scholar, Alison Stuebe, MD, MSc, are both primary investigators on the grant. Emily Patterson, PhD, at Ohio State’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences in the College of Medicine, is a third primary investigator, and the grant includes co-investigators Carolina Gill, MS, and Kelly Umstead, MS, faculty at NC State’s College of Design.
The team plans to identify factors in postnatal units that contribute to poor maternal and infant outcomes, define those key factors, and then create innovative recommendations for better management of the maternal-infant dyad. Implementation of recommendations would facilitate improved safety and wellness.
The project’s primary goal is to reduce emergency department visits and hospital readmission up to 90 days postpartum for mothers and infants as a benchmark for improving patient safety and care value in three intersecting domains: Mother/Baby Recovery, Precision Clinical Care, and Care Transition from Hospital to Home.
For more detailed information about the project, please view the official press release.