Overview:
The University of Oklahoma has received more than $5 million in federal funding for maternal health research, including projects focused on improving outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native mothers through culturally responsive care, technology and traditional food systems.
The University of Oklahoma’s Fran and Earl Ziegler College of Nursing has received more than $5 million for maternal health research, including work aimed at improving outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native families.
The funding comes from the National Institutes of Health and will support four research projects over the next four years. The projects will examine access to maternal health care, the use of health data, culturally responsive care, and the roles of nutrition and technology in maternal health. Researchers from OU’s College of Nursing, Hudson College of Public Health, College of Medicine and Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences will participate.
While one project, funded at $1.5 milion, will expand a national data set to provide a more detailed picture of maternal and infant health across the United States, three projects will involve tribal communities and health organizations in Alaska or build on ongoing research into food, nutrition and maternal health in Oklahoma and Kansas.
The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any high-income nation. American Indian and Alaska Native mothers are up to four times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications during childbirth and the postpartum period, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts say most of those deaths are preventable.
Advocates and experts attribute the high rates of maternal mortality in Native communities to a long history of medical neglect, racism and the loss of cultural birthing practices.
Two of the projects will be conducted by researchers at Southcentral Foundation, an Alaska Native-owned nonprofit that provides health and wellness services to more than 70,000 Indigenous people living in Alaska.
Vanessa Hiratsuka, Ph.D., will lead “Exploring Maternal Innovative Technology Supports and Tools in the Alaska Tribal Health System.”
The project, funded at $1,242,126, seeks to identify maternal health technologies that are culturally appropriate and accessible to Alaska Native people.
Julie Beans, MPH, will lead another project at Southcentral Foundation titled “Maternal Health Experiences in the Alaska Tribal Health System,” which aims to identify gaps in knowledge about maternal health care for American Indian and Alaska Native communities.
Funded at $1,258,349, the project will involve working with American Indian and Alaska Native women who have given birth to better understand their experiences with health care providers and develop solutions to address disparities in maternal health outcomes.
A third project, titled “Integration of Tribal Food Systems and Novel Cardiometabolic Risk Biomarkers within Food is Medicine: FLOURISH Supplement,” received $1,054,311.
The work will build on existing FLOURISH (Food for Lifecourse Resilience in Maternal Security and Health) research, which examines the role of food as a resilience factor and its connections to other protective factors that may improve health outcomes among American Indian and Alaska Native women during pregnancy and shortly after giving birth.
The new project will expand FLOURISH by incorporating community perspectives on tribal foodways and local food environments through discussions with community leaders and knowledge holders in Oklahoma and Kansas.
The research will also use emerging wearable technology to measure stress, physical activity, sedentary behavior, sleep, and vascular health.
“Tribal communities are the experts on their own food systems, and this component of the research will help to ensure the FLOURISH Food is Medicine intervention aligns with tribal partners’ priorities and assets,” Marianna Wetherill, Ph.D., project co-leader, said in a statement.
