Professor Studies Role of Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes in Maternal and Child Health.

Professor Studies Role of Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes in Maternal and Child Health
Samantha Parker Kelleher, assistant professor of epidemiology, aims to understand maternal and reproductive health across the lifespan.
From epidemiology doctoral student to assistant professor of epidemiology, Samantha Parker Kelleher (SPH’14) has dedicated much of her epidemiologic research at the School of Public Health to understanding the relationship between prenatal exposures and infant and childhood outcomes, as well as the role of adverse pregnancy outcomes in subsequent maternal health.
Since receiving her PhD and joining the faculty in 2014, Kelleher has studied the physical, social, behavioral, and environmental risk factors for many reproductive and perinatal outcomes, including preeclampsia, birth defects, and childhood neurodevelopmental disorders.
She has also begun to expand her reproductive research beyond pregnancy to better understand the long-term risks of pregnancy to maternal health, including hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
“There’s so much focus on the short-term impacts of pregnancy on maternal health, and what I’m interested in now is understanding how pregnancy outcomes impact the full span of a woman’s life, starting with the postpartum period,” says Kelleher.
Kelleher is the principal investigator for a five-year study funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in which she is examining the role of adverse pregnancy outcomes and the maternal risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) among participants in the Black Women’s Health Study, the largest prospective cohort study of Black women in the United States. Despite the racial disparities in CHD morbidity and mortality, the majority of available data on this issue pertains to White populations.
The grant for the study is part of a Career Development Award that Kelleher received in 2016 from the National Institutes of Health, which also included a training plan for her to learn more about cardiovascular epidemiology and the racial disparities that exist in heart disease.
“What we’ve found is that, similarly to previously published research, women with a history of preterm birth are at an increased risk for subsequent maternal cardiovascular disease,” says Kelleher. That means that pregnant parents who have babies preterm are more likely to experience coronary-related health events and procedures later in life, such as heart attacks. “So the next step is to see if there are any earlier signals of cardiovascular disease that we can use to identify women who are at risk of a heart attack or coronary disease later on,” she says.
Kelleher is working toward this goal in a pilot project with Christina Yarrington, an assistant professor of obstetrics and medicine at the School of Medicine. Their project examines postpartum blood pressure among women delivering at Boston Medical Center. It focuses on the one-year period after delivery, beyond the traditional postpartum period of six weeks.
“We’ve expanded this period because there is research that shows pregnancy-related cardiovascular outcomes can lead to maternal morbidity and mortality in the full year postpartum,” Kelleher says. “The trajectory of hypertension right after delivery could be a means to get women into care before they have these severe outcomes.”
Kelleher and Yarrington, along with three MPH practicum students, are also collaborating on a study that examines the risk of hypertensive disorders among pregnant women who have contracted COVID-19 during their pregnancy.
Last year, Kelleher received the Rising Star Award from the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Research, which recognizes researchers who are on track to become leaders in the field of reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology. In addition to her research, she also teaches Directed Research in Epidemiology and Applications of Intermediate Epidemiology at SPH.
“As I progress in my career, the niche that I want to carve in my research is to use epidemiologic methods to study postpartum health and beyond,” says Kelleher. By focusing on the health of a mother after pregnancy, “we can inform guidelines for their care and think about how to support women after pregnancy in ways that will improve their long-term health. That’s where I hope to pair my epidemiology expertise with my passion for making healthcare as seamless as possible for women after childbirth.”
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