# Improving Health by Linking Postpartum and Well-Baby Visits

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO · 2020 · $203,439

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Severe maternal morbidity (SMM) and maternal mortality (MM) remain a public health crisis in the United States
despite efforts to improve maternal health. Most pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. occur in the postpartum
(PP) period, thus, timely access to high quality comprehensive care during the transition period from prenatal to
PP period is critical to reduce SMM and MM.
High quality longitudinal health care improves outcomes for women before, during and after pregnancy; and
decreases morbidity and mortality related to pregnancy. The “Linking Inter-professional Newborn and
Contraception Care (LINCC) Trial” was funded in 2019 to test a novel, patient-centered approach to providing
contraception care, in conjunction with an infant’s well baby visit (WBV), for PP women. The LINCC trial aims to
remove barriers to accessing PP care by co-scheduling the PP contraception visit with WBVs. The LINCC trial
provides an ideal foundation upon which to develop a reproducible model to identify women at risk for MM and
SMM, and link them into care, among a national sample of predominantly low-income women receiving care at
Community Health Centers (CHCs). This proposal is aligned with the goals of this supplement by 1) incorporating
community partnerships interested in reducing SMM and MM; 2) focusing on low-income minority women who
are at greatest risk for SMM and MM; 3) leveraging data from a large national sample of women to create a tool
to accurately identify women at risk for SMM and MM; and 4) incorporating women’s voices in the design of an
implementation plan.
The specific aims of this supplement are to: (1) build a population-health interface to identify pregnant and PP
women at risk for SMM or MM using standard clinical health data from electronic medical records and (2) Validate
the registry (i.e., LINK MOMS) using data from CHCs across the country. Lastly, we aim to: (3) design an
implementation plan for the LINK MOMS registry in CHCs across the country.
Increasing access to timely comprehensive care is a promising strategy to prevent pregnancy-related morbidity
and mortality. The long-term impact of this study is to reduce adverse health outcomes among PP women by
increasing access to patient-oriented care before, during, and after pregnancy. Findings may provide evidence
supporting a paradigm shift for linked PP care and identify important insights to facilitate successful
implementation of this registry in health care systems across the nation.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10200413
- **Project number:** 3R01HD097171-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
- **Principal Investigator:** RACHEL CASKEY
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $203,439
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-03-21 → 2024-02-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10200413

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10200413, Improving Health by Linking Postpartum and Well-Baby Visits (3R01HD097171-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10200413. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*