University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence
University of Illinois at Chicago
The University of Illinois at Chicago's Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence aims to characterize how structural racism impacts biophysical outcomes, is spatially correlated, and contextualizes the daily experiences of women with lived experience in Chicago. The UIC Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence consists of three Cores: Research, Community Partnership, and Training who together examine the mechanisms by which structural racism contributes to maternal health disparities.
University of Illinois at Chicago
Contact
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Co-Principal Investigator (Co-PI): Rachel Caskey
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Co-PI: Anne Elizabeth Glassgow
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Project Manager: Diana Ghebenei
At a Glance
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Research Project
2
Community Partners
Research Topics- Structural racism
- Mental health
Status
Research activities started
Overarching Aims
Conduct robust transdisciplinary research on maternal health equity, using a multilevel approach, with the goal of decreasing preventable maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity, and promote maternal health equity among women that experience persistent disparities.
- Describe the exposure to adverse neighborhood, family, and individual risk factors among urban postpartum women.
- Assess the effect of multilevel exposures on biological outcomes among urban postpartum women. This includes generating molecular profiles associated with neighborhood factors and modeling the functional relationships between biological outcomes and risk exposures.
Serve as a hub for maternal health career development and work-force training for early-stage investigators, pre-doctoral trainees, post-doctoral trainees, and community-based health professionals who are interested in research training.
Address the critical need for a structured, systematic approach to engage communities in research. Expanding on existing partnerships with EverThrive Illinois and AllianceChicago to create a multi-sector coalition that shares a common goal of improving maternal outcomes. To do this we will:
- Facilitate, coordinate, and evaluate community engagement and dissemination at all phases of the research and across the center.
- Create an integrated community partnership framework to promote meaningful engagement and responsive research and facilitate appropriate and relevant dissemination that is actionable in the community and responsive to the local context.
- Build capacity for bilateral exchange between community partners and researchers through partnerships that establish shared understanding and goals for research processes and community experiences.
Serve as a research resource and build a research resource and repository of maternal health data (biological, clinical, survey, neighborhood) broadly available for use by researchers.
Research Project Details
Multilevel exposure to adversity across the life-course: Quantifying biological implications in urban postpartum women
This mixed-methods research study will characterize how neighborhood exposure to structural racism impacts maternal health disparities. The goal is to identify the root causes of maternal health inequities, moving away from clinical, behavioral,and social determinants that reflect the actions of individuals to the historical, systemic, structural, and political forces that create and perpetuate these disparities. This prospective, cross-sectional study will collect neighborhood, family, and individual level data from multiple sources, including community-level data, patient surveys, clinical-electronic health records, biological data, and qualitative interviews with postpartum women. The goal of this project is to illuminate mechanisms by which structural racism creates unequal exposure to adversity and biophysical outcomes. The project also will conduct interviews to generate knowledge about the multilevel (neighborhood, family, and individual) context of daily experience across the life-course of postpartum women using qualitative photovoice methods.
Key Maternal Health Indicators: Illinois
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124,820
live births in 20231
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31.0%
of births were cesarean deliveries 1
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10.8%
of births were preterm 1
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39.5%
of deliveries were covered by Medicaid 1
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903
women with life-threatening complications per every 100,000 births 2
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27
women die from pregnancy complications per every 100,000 births 3
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1.7x
more Black women die from pregnancy complications than White women 3
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Top-3 causes
of pregnancy-related deaths: substance use disorder, cardiac and coronary conditions, and pre-existing chronic medical conditions 3
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4.6%
of women are without a birthing hospital within 30 minutes 4
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76.7%
of birthing women start prenatal care in the 1st trimester 1
Partner Organizations
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence will engage with EverThrive Illinois and Alliance Chicago to create a state-wide community board and facilitate a complimentary network of community healthcare providers to support their work.
- AllianceChicago
- EverThrive Illinois
"The goal of the Center is to advance maternal health research by examining the mechanisms by which structural inequity contributes to health disparities and develop innovative strategies to promote health equity in partnership with communities.”
References
- Data are from 2023 live births occurring within the state. Cesarean deliveries are the percentage of live births where the final route and method of delivery was cesarean. Preterm births are the percentage of live births where the gestational age at birth was less than 37 weeks. Medicaid coverage is the percentage of live births where the source of payment for the delivery hospitalization was Medicaid. Prenatal care in the 1st trimester is the percentage of live births where the first prenatal appointment occurred between the 1st and 3rd month of pregnancy.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. National Vital Statistics System, Natality on CDC WONDER Online Database. - Life threatening complications are deliveries with a diagnosis or procedure code indicating severe maternal morbidity. Information reported for 2021.
Source: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, State Inpatient Databases 2010 to 2021. - Information is based on pregnancy-related deaths in 2018-2020. Pregnancy-related deaths include deaths during or within a year of pregnancy from causes related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management.
Source: State of Illinois' Department of Public Health. The Illinois Maternal Morbidity and Mortality Report, 2018-2020. - March of Dimes Maternity Care Deserts Report 2023.