New funding to support research on prenatal opioid exposure
Dr. Ehrenthal and Dr. Lawrence Berger are Principal Investigators on a project titled “Prenatal Opioid Exposure: Birth, health, socioeconomic, and educational outcomes of mothers and their children” that recently received five years of funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. This study will evaluate the relationships between maternal opioid use and use disorder during the prenatal and postnatal periods with mother, child and family health and well-being and resource utilization using the existing, state-level “large data” from numerous sources, linked together on an individual-client level.
New funding to support research on conception failure and pregnancy loss
Dr. Ehrenthal is a Co-Investigator on a project with Principal Investigator Dr. Jenna Nobles that recently received five years of funding from the National Institutes of Health. This project, titled “Conception Failure and Pregnancy Loss in the US,” uses new georeferenced data on pre-pregnancy and early pregnancy for 4 million U.S. women to provide the first estimates of large-scale population variability in the pathway to live birth and to document factors that affect this pathway.
New Publication: "Peripartum Blood Transfusion Among Rural Women in the United States"
Members of the lab collaborated on a recent publication, “Peripartum Blood Transfusion Among Rural Women in the United States.” The authors studied the rural-urban differences in blood transfusion among women who were giving birth for the first time and were delivering singleton, vertex pregnancies at term. They found that the odds of blood transfusion is higher for women living in rural areas than those in more urban settings.
New Publication: "Beyond Birth Control: Noncontraceptive Benefits of Hormonal Methods and Their Key Role in the General Medical Care of Women"
Dr. Ehrenthal collaborated with faculty in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health on a new publication in the Journal of Women’s Health, “Beyond Birth Control: Noncontraceptive Benefits of Hormonal Methods and Their Key Role in the General Medical Care of Women.” In this article, the authors describe the wide range of gynecological and nongynecological conditions that hormonal contraceptive methods can be used to treat.
New Publication: "Estimating the effect of Prenatal Care Coordination in Wisconsin: A sibling fixed effects analysis"
Members of the lab worked with faculty collaborators on campus on the recent publication, “Estimating the effect of Prenatal Care Coordination in Wisconsin: A sibling fixed effects analysis.” In this article, the authors assess the effect of Prenatal Care Coordination on birth outcomes for Wisconsin Medicaid‐covered deliveries. They found that Prenatal Care Coordination was associated with improved birth outcomes.
UW-Madison Prevention Research Center Starts on Campus
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is one of 25 academic institutions to receive five-year (2019 – 2024) funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop and maintain a Prevention Research Center. The goal of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Prevention Research Center (UWPRC) is to improve the health of low-income women, infants, and families by conducting health promotion and disease prevention research focused on maternal, infant, and child health.
Congratulations, Dr. Rubenstein!
Eric Rubsenstein, PhD is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Morse Scholar at the Waisman Center and a Postdoctoral Trainee in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Rubenstein and his collaborators have been funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development to assess the fertility and epidemiology of pregnancy in women with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Wisconsin using Big Data 4 Little Kids (BD4LK). Because of past injustice and stigma, very little is known about how women with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience pregnancy and parenting. We need to know the demographic patterns of pregnancy, what pregnancy related risk factors mothers face, and the risks of suboptimal pregnancy outcomes for mother and child. With this information we can work to develop and ensure best services and treatment for a growing population that faces extreme disparity. BD4LK will allow us to innovatively examine this critical question at a population level through linkage between maternal Medicaid records (in which we can identify the mother’s disability) and child birth records (where we can assess maternal and child pregnancy outcomes).
Welcome new lab members!
Please join us in welcoming three new members to the Ehrenthal lab!
Katie Gillespie, DNP is the Deputy Director of the UW-Madison Prevention Research Center and an Assistant Scientist in the Division of Reproductive and Population Health. Previously, she worked as the Title V Director and Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Supervisor at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Division of Public Health, where she was responsible for the administrative oversight, implementation, and reporting for the federal Title V MCH Block Grant. While at the Department, she facilitated the integration of principles of health equity, engaging the community, and quality improvement science into a variety of public health programs designed to improve the health of women, infants and children. She was also instrumental in the development of statewide quality collaboratives that engage clinical and public health partners in population-level quality improvement initiatives. She received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Northern Illinois University and a Doctorate of Nursing Practice in Community and Public Health from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Daphne Kuo, PhD is a social demographer and joins us as an Assistant Scientist in the Division of Reproductive and Population Health. For the past ten years she worked in the Population Health Institute in public health surveillance, health policy, and program evaluation. Her work has covered fertility, health behaviors, school climate, and health insurance. She uses state-of-the-art statistical methods including propensity score matching, multiple imputation, and multi-level analysis. In addition to surveillance data such as PRAMS, BRFSS, and YRBS, she uses Census (including ACS), natality data, and administrative data such as state insurance claims (WHIO), Medicaid, traffic violation, and impaired driver program records.
Alexa DeBoth, MPH, MPA is joining as an Assistant Researcher, working as the Program Specialist for the UW-Madison Prevention Research Center. Alexa received her Bachelors degree in Biology and Gender & Women’s Studies and Masters degrees in Public Health and Public Affairs in 2019 from the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She is interested in how social and political factors impact health outcomes to address maternal and child health disparities. Her current research focuses on factors impacting infant mortality among Native Americans and state policy impacts on reproductive health care availability.
Congratulations, Dr. Mohamoud!
Congratulations to Yousra Mohamoud, who graduated with her PhD in Epidemiology in the spring of 2019!