# mHealth Mindfulness Intervention for Pregnant Black and Latina Women at Risk of Postpartum Depression

> **NIH NIH R01** · KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE · 2023 · $1,042,483

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Postpartum depression (PPD) is a debilitating and costly condition affecting over 20% of postpartum women
and disproportionately impacts Blacks and Latinas. The COVID-19 pandemic is leading to a severe increase in
the rate of depression while the US is already struggling with deep-seated inequities in mental health care for
Black and Latina populations. The US Preventive Services Task Force recently recommended that women at
increased risk of PPD should be referred for counseling to reduce the risk of PPD. However, numerous patient-
level (e.g. lack of time or money) and system-level barriers (e.g. shortage of providers), now compounded with
the COVID-19 pandemic, pose challenges to the receipt of counseling, particularly among Black and Latina
populations that already experienced a lower rate of treatment initiation. There is an urgent need for evidence-
based accessible and scalable mental health care options for these high-risk and vulnerable women.
Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) are effective and theory-driven interventions for reducing depression
symptoms. However, standard MBIs require 30+ hours of in-person or online sessions for 8 weeks and are
often too intense for pregnant women with high depression symptom burden. Our pilot study of a self-paced,
small dosage (10-20 minutes/day for 6 weeks), mobile-based (mHealth) MBI for pregnant women with high
depression symptoms demonstrated promising feasibility and preliminary efficacy results in reducing
depression symptoms providing support for a fully-powered trial. We will conduct a hybrid effectiveness-
implementation study to test the effectiveness of the mHealth MBI to reduce postpartum depression symptoms
in Black and Latina pregnant women at increased risk of PPD, and examine barriers and facilitators of
implementation within a large healthcare system. The study will take place at Kaiser Permanente Northern
California (KPNC), an integrated health care delivery system with a diverse population and comprehensive
electronic health records. KPNC’s universal perinatal depression screening program will be leveraged to
efficiently identify eligible women. We will randomize 600 pregnant (300 Latina and 300 Black) women into the
intervention arm or time- and attention-matched control arm and ask them to practice mindfulness or another
program for 6 weeks, 10-20 minutes a day. We will partner with HeadspaceTM and tailor the digital platform to
deliver the mindfulness program and obtain adherence data. Patient-reported outcomes of depression (primary
outcome), anxiety, stress and sleep (secondary outcomes), and attention monitoring and acceptance (target
engagements) will be collected 3 times during the study (baseline, post intervention, and 4 weeks postpartum).
Implementation of the intervention will be evaluated using the RE-AIM framework (Reach, Effectiveness,
Adoption, Implementation and Maintenance). Further, using the results of this trial, we will determine optimal
dosage a...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10683084
- **Project number:** 5R01MH126580-03
- **Recipient organization:** KAISER FOUNDATION RESEARCH INSTITUTE
- **Principal Investigator:** Lyndsay Ammon Avalos
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $1,042,483
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2021-07-01 → 2026-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10683084

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10683084, mHealth Mindfulness Intervention for Pregnant Black and Latina Women at Risk of Postpartum Depression (5R01MH126580-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-21 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10683084. Licensed CC0.

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