Liane Ventura, faculty in the East Tennessee State University College of Public Health’s Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) in Women’s Health, published an abstract in the 2024 Society of Behavioral Medicine’s Annual Meeting Abstracts Supplement. The abstract, listed in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, is titled, “Upstream Approaches for Improving Health Equity through Community Engagement in Maternal and Child Health Research.”
Additional presenters included faculty from Wayne State University, Sanford Research, University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and Arcadia University.
The lives of women and children in the United States (US) are threatened by many preventable or treatable conditions. Adverse maternal and child health (MCH) outcomes include gestational diabetes, eclampsia, preterm birth, low birthweight, and maternal and infant mortality rates. Health disparities are prevalent with underserved communities having higher rates of adverse MCH outcomes. Notably, the material mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women was 2.6 times the rate for non-Hispanic White women. Interacting social, environmental and health conditions exacerbate existing health disparities, putting women and children at greater health risk.
Investigating and improving MCH outcomes throughout the US, particularly among rural and marginalized populations, requires upstream approaches that are place-based and rooted in health equity. One such approach is community-engaged research whereby partners are central to the research efforts. Partners are individuals directly impacted by and/or having influence over the MCH health outcomes being investigated. Community-engagement occurs on a continuum whereby partners may be involved in conceptualizing the research, in data collection, or in analyzing data and disseminating research findings. Since there are various methods of conducting community-engaged research, it is important to elevate evolving and best practices within this area of research, particularly within the field of MCH where health disparities are particularly evident.
Ms. Ventura discussed practices for utilizing community engagement methods specifically to co-develop a Geographic Information System mapping tool to spatially map MCH outcomes and associated factors in Western North Carolina. This symposium showcased several community-engaged MCH research projects through highlighting best practice for conducting community-engaged research, the importance of adopting a health equity lens, and the potential impact on population-level MCH outcomes.