Maternal Health Equity Lab

Our Approach: Engaged scholarship with communities, birthing persons, health systems, providers, programs and policymakers, to reduce socioeconomic and racial/ethnic health disparities and improve the health of birthing persons and their infants.

Our research is considered “engaged scholarship”, that is we use the tools of science and partner with stakeholders at multiple levels to create new knowledge that drives innovation in “real world” settings to improve health care—and ultimately the health and life chances of low-income birthing persons and infants. We work in multi-disciplinary research teams with collaborators in epidemiology, economics, psychology, sociology, human development and other disciplines.

Our work focuses on advancing maternal and infant health equity. Key features of the interventions we develop, implement, and test include community-centered, culturally relevant, care; community-clinical linkages; empowering birthing individuals through interactions with race, ethnicity, and language concordant community health workers (CHWs); strengthening patient-provider communication; and influence individuals, communities, health systems, and policy makers to achieve antiracist, equitable, health care and outcomes.

Our program of research targets the health and health care of Medicaid-insured pregnant and postpartum persons, many of whom live in difficult life circumstances, are women of color who experience systemic racism and social determinants of health disadvantages and live in the most deprived neighborhoods. This is especially true for Black birthing persons and infants, who have more than double the rates of maternal mortality, adverse birth outcomes and infant mortality. We focus our research on testing and disseminating scalable interventions and programs that are designed to improve health care and health outcomes for these populations facing inequities.