# The effect of HOusing instability and neighborhood deprivation on Maternal hEalth-HOME

> **NIH NIH U54** · MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN · 2024 · $750,152

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT: HOME
Racial disparities in pregnancy outcomes, including heightened morbidity and mortality for mothers
and their infants, persist and are not fully explained by individual risk factors. Black birthing people in
the US are three times more likely to be affected than their white counterparts, and in Wisconsin, the
risk is five times greater. Due to Milwaukee, Wisconsin being one of the five most segregated cities in
the US, Black birthing families are also more likely to be low-income than their white counterparts and
experience housing instability. Housing instability is a crucial social determinant of health that affects
birthing people and their children, perpetuating poverty and poor health in future generations. There is
an important gap in knowledge of the effect of housing instability on maternal health, that we seek to
address in this proposal. The “Reducing HOusing instability and neighborhood deprivation for
Maternal hEalth” (HOME) proposal’s central hypothesis is that investigating the effects of different
housing statuses and stability on maternal physical and mental health will lead to more profound
understanding of the impact of housing instability on pregnancy outcomes and motivate policy change
to reduce maternal health disparities. In Aim 1, we will understand how personal and neighborhood
characteristics and services contribute to housing stability among low-income pregnant people to
inform programs to improve stability. In Aim 2, we will explore the impact of housing
instability/homelessness and neighborhood conditions on allostatic load, physical and mental health,
and pregnancy outcomes. In Aim 3, we will identify the service needs of pregnant people in each
housing status, and advocate for policy-level change to address housing instability among birthing
people. The proposed study will tease out the contribution of these factors and characteristics and
correlate them to maternal health outcomes. This work could inform screening tools to assess
pregnancy risk, inform policy change, and elucidate biological mechanisms by which structural factors
result in health disparities.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10908685
- **Project number:** 5U54HD113408-02
- **Recipient organization:** MEDICAL COLLEGE OF WISCONSIN
- **Principal Investigator:** Julia B Dickson-Gomez
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $750,152
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-08-17 → 2030-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10908685

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10908685, The effect of HOusing instability and neighborhood deprivation on Maternal hEalth-HOME (5U54HD113408-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10908685. Licensed CC0.

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