Maternal Health Node
Optimizing the health of mothers across the life course.
Maternal health and child health go hand in hand. Intergenerational health is a core concept of the life course health development approach, and 2- generational interventions are being trialed throughout our research nodes.
Addressing US maternal mortality is a health equity priority. The Life Course Health Development approach regards maternal mortality and morbidity risk in the context of earlier risk and protective factors over the life course, including the potential for chronic toxic stress burden of racism and minoritization. Using family and community-engaged models, the LCT-RN supports a two-generational life course approach to co-developing preventive interventions to improve reproductive wellness and health equity. These interventions build on strengths and aim to optimize health.
While funding and staffing limitations have precluded the development of a separate LCT-RN Maternal Health Node we encourage all interested researchers to engage with the new Maternal Health Research Collaborative for Minority-Serving Institutions (MH-RC-MSI) awardees, supporting MSIs to test pathways to these disparities and interventions to disrupt them using LCH.
Please see this introductory video from Dr. Yvonne Bronner at Morgan State University for an overview of the collaborative.
Publications
Lu, M. C., & Halfon, N. (2003). Racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes: a life-course perspective. Maternal and child health journal, 7(1), 13–30. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1022537516969
Lu, M. C., Kotelchuck, M., Hogan, V., Jones, L., Wright, K., & Halfon, N. (2010). Closing the Black-White gap in birth outcomes: a life-course approach. Ethnicity & disease, 20(1 Suppl 2), S2–76.