I have the expertise and experience necessary to conduct researched aimed to examine the potential of enhanced remote monitoring to improve maternal health with vulnerable populations in rural Louisiana. The study aims to collect and assess patient, community, and provider perspectives concerning the barriers and facilitators to remote monitoring. As a nurse researcher and advanced practice, Maternal-Infant Clinical Nurse Specialist, I understand the rich contextual life course factors that influence perinatal health, and how to account for these in research design and analyses. My clinical and research experiences provided me with a strong background in social determinants of health, and how complex factors such as experiences of racism/discrimination, language, income, family structure, health behaviors, and genetics contribute to poor health outcomes. I have experience leading research teams in primary data collection, data analysis, and publication of findings from cross-sectional and qualitative studies of pregnant women, with a special emphasis on minority communities. I have implemented studies funded by local, state, and national agencies, including a post-doc and R03 funded by the National Institutes of Health. I also completed a NINR fellowship and post-doc in Genetics (2001-2005) that gives me a broad foundation in which to consider how social factors interact with genetics to impact health outcomes. My research over the past 20 years focused on health promotion for vulnerable, underserved women in Southeast Louisiana and the greater New Orleans community. In 2001-2005, I was co-I in a community-based outreach program on the LSUHSC campus, whereby the Cancer Center partnered with lay health workers and community organizations to increase mammography and pap screening for cancer prevention in African American and Hispanic women. I received R03 NIH funding, leading a team of investigators (Dr. Harville- co-I) to study how socially vulnerable pregnant women were coping with Hurricane Katrina recovery, 5-7 years after the event. This study exposed the prevalence of high stress, depression, and anxiety among a sample of 400, diverse, pregnant women and redirected my work toward improving perinatal mental health in the community. I was funded in 2017 by the Louisiana Clinical and Translational Science (LA CaTS) for a community based participatory study to conduct focus groups with diverse women and caregivers to determine their perspectives on community awareness, need, and best strategies to support maternal mental health in New Orleans. I also worked as a study consultant in a CDC/March of Dimes grant, collecting data by interviewing care providers and conducting focus groups from primarily American African women to determine barriers and facilitators to address the high prevalence of congenital syphilis among underserved women in LA. Currently I am a co-I with Dr. Harville, in a study to assess a rural community’s needs for perinatal mental health and evaluate an early pregnancy intervention, leading the qualitative data collection and analyses. This current rural health maternal study provides a foundation on which to study the introduction of early physical monitoring interventions that have potential to improve perinatal outcomes among African American women.
