Our Approach: Engaged scholarship with communities, women and their families, health systems, providers, programs and policymakers, to reduce health disparities and improve maternal and infant health.

Our research is considered “engaged scholarship”, that is we use the tools of science and partner with stakeholders at multiple levels to create new knowledge that drives innovation in “real world” settings. We work in multi-disciplinary research teams with collaborators in epidemiology, economics, psychology, sociology, human development and other disciplines.

Our work focuses on advancing maternal and infant health and health care. We develop, implement, and test community-centered scalable interventions. Key features of these interventions include community-clinical linkages; community health worker (CHW) interventions; patient activation and self-management; and strengthened patient-provider communication.

Our program of research targets the health and health care of Medicaid-insured pregnant and postpartum women, especially those with an increased health burden and social determinants of health risks. We use data and evaluation to help individuals, communities, policy makers, and health systems make data-driven decisions to achieve population health improvements.