Baylor receives NICHD grant for maternal-fetal medicine clinical research

The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) recently announced new funding for participating centers in the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Network, including Baylor College of Medicine. The MFMU Network aims to improve obstetric care, pregnancy health and overall outcomes for patients and their babies and has conducted and published landmark trials that have shaped the delivery of health care for pregnant people and their families for more than 30 years.

As part of the seven-year MFMU Network grant, researchers from Baylor and Texas Children’s Hospital will enroll pregnant and lactating people in multi-site clinical trials and observational studies to improve obstetrical outcomes for patients, such as reducing maternal and infant deaths, preterm births, complications from diabetes and hypertension, and lessen labor and delivery complications. The two main clinical sites for enrollment include Ben Taub Hospital and the Texas Children’s Hospital Pavilion for Women.

“We have spent the last 15 years building up our obstetrical clinical trial capacities, specifically around high-risk pregnancy care, and leveraging the great history of discovery-based science that Baylor and Texas Children’s are so well known for,” said Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, principal investigator and Henry and Emma Meyer Chair and professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Baylor and Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women. “The clinical trials and science that will be conducted as part of the NICHD MFMU will change the practice of obstetrics and improve clinical outcomes for pregnant and lactating people and their newborns here in Texas, across the country and around the world. We are honored to lend to the science and care of the MFMU trials, and provide much-need solutions aimed at improving the level of maternal health care.”

Additional clinical site grant recipients include Brown University/Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University Health Sciences, Duke University, Magee-Women’s Research Institution and Foundation, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of California at San Francisco, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Houston and University of Utah.