Culturally-Informed Interdisciplinary Prevention Program for Perinatal Depression

Funded by: American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds 

Kavitha Venkateswaran, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator), Lisa M. Edwards, Ph.D., Kimberly D’Anna-Hernandez, Ph.D., & Karen Robinson, Ph.D. (Marquette University), Jennifer Schumacher, RN, BSN, CLEC (Doula Nurse, LLC), Jennifer Garrison, PT, DPT, BCB-PMD (Zablocki VA Medical Center)

The purpose of the Culturally-Informed Interdisciplinary Prevention Program for Perinatal Depression is to disseminate training of a low-cost prevention program designed to decrease adverse perinatal outcomes for people of color. This 18-month project was funded by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) maternal and child equity project funds that were directed to MCW/AHW by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to administer, and will involve multiple Milwaukee community agencies. The initiative is led by a team of interdisciplinary professionals from Counseling Psychology, Nursing, Developmental Psychobiology, Physical Therapy, Nursing, Midwifery and Doula support services. This grant will support two main endeavors: 1) Training healthcare professionals to become proficient in implementing an augmented version of the evidence-based Reach Out Stay Strong Essentials (ROSE) prevention program (Zlotnick et al., 2006), with the incorporation of interdisciplinary components from a culturally-informed lens 2) Developing a Multicultural Perinatal Mental Health Collaborative comprised of professionals dedicated to addressing the culturally-specific and systemic needs of birthing people of color in Wisconsin.

Mood, Stress and Health Care Experiences

Funded by: Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL)

Kimberly D’Anna-Hernandez, Ph.D. (Principal Investigator), Lisa M. Edwards, Ph.D., Kavitha Venkateswaran, Ph.D., & Karen Robinson, Ph.D. (Marquette University)

The “Mood, Stress and Health Care Experiences” study will investigate the role of health care experiences in perinatal mental health, birth outcomes and stress biology in Latinx mothers. This project was funded by the Institute for Women’s Leadership (IWL) Interdisciplinary Grant Program and involves collaborations with various local Milwaukee service providers. It is being overseen by interdisciplinary professionals from Counseling Psychology, Developmental Psychobiology, and Nursing. This work will be the first of its kind to quantitatively measure both the psychological, biological, and clinical consequences of stress and healthcare experiences in the Latinx population. In the future, we hope to add further clinical outcome measures (preeclampsia, blood pressure), observations of patient-provider interactions and follow up of the developmental trajectory of the children.