Research

The New York Community-Hospital-Academic Maternal Health Equity Partnership (NY-CHAMP) is an NIH-funded Maternal Health Research Center of Excellence. The broad goal of NY-CHAMP is to upend the maternal healthcare ecosystem in New York City and State by establishing a sustainable, highly collaborative infrastructure for community-centered maternal health science. NY-CHAMP, led by 9 multi-sector MPIs, has carefully co-designed a research, training, and community engagement agenda with our partners that will 1) identify and address the comorbid biologic and psychologic pathways linking adverse social determinants of health (SDoH) to disparities in severe maternal morbidity (SMM) and maternal mortality (MM); and 2) co-create and implement scalable multi-level strategies grounded in anti-racism and empowerment to inform systems and policy in our city and region.

This project is a collaboration between Columbia University, Weill Cornell Medicine, and 18 community partners:

• Northern Manhattan Perinatal Project
• New York City Health + Hospitals
• Nurse-Family Partnership Program Comprehensive Interdisciplinary Developmental Services, Inc.
• Black Women's Blueprint
• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists District II
• Nido de Esperanza
• University of Rochester
• Mexican Coalition for the Empowerment of Youth and Families
• Christiana Care Health System
• New York State Department of Health
• North Shore University Hospital
• Perinatal and Infant Community Health Program
• The Bridge Directory
• Dominican Women's Development Center
• Caribbean Women's Health Association
• New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
• Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai
• Poppy Seed Health

Engaging Communities to Reduce Morbidity from Maternal Sepsis (EnCoRe MoMS) is a research project at Columbia University focused on exploring the experiences, needs, and perceived solutions for maternal care continuity, sepsis prevention, and promotion of equity in postpartum. Sepsis is the second leading cause of maternal death in the United States. For racial and ethnic minoritized birthing people, especially those who are Black, living in poverty, and from underserved communities, labor and postpartum are particularly vulnerable risk periods. Yet few evidence-based interventions exist.

Continuous community engagement is crucial to this research project and EnCoRe MoMS prioritizes intentionality, reflexivity, humility, and trust-building with community stakeholders. EnCoRe MoMS will be assembling a Community Leadership Advisory Board (CoLAB) to provide feedback on a comprehensive maternal sepsis bundle and co-design an integrative supportive care model that entails maternal sepsis community engagement, care linkages, education, services, and policy efforts.