Utilizing pediatric primary care connections to advance reproductive health

NIH RePORTER · NIH · K23 · $173,880 · view on reporter.nih.gov ↗

Abstract

In the US, nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended. Unintended pregnancies are associated with risks to maternal and child health including late prenatal care, premature delivery, developmental delay, and family instability. Governmental agencies and professional maternal and child health organizations support access to contraceptive use and family planning services as essential for women’s health. However, some communities face barriers to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) access. The Latino/a community in the US is growing and many Latinos have limited preventive health care access. With the growing number of US-born Latino children, the pediatric setting is an unexplored venue for interventions that address SRH access for Latina parents. SRH interventions must also be person-centered and culturally relevant. In this K23 application, Dr Caballero, a research-trained pediatrician, proposes a rigorous training and research plan that will facilitate her long-term career goal: to strengthen child and family health by developing and implementing person-centered interventions to improve SRH for Latinas. She proposes to: 1) develop expertise in qualitative methods and analysis to inform implementation-focused outcomes; 2) develop skills in human factors engineering principles and implementation science; and 3) learn and apply family planning demography principles to intervention design and analysis. She also proposes innovative mentored research to develop and pilot a contraceptive screening and care coordination intervention (Family Connect) in a pediatric primary care setting. Family Connect will be stakeholder-informed and rooted in human factors engineering approaches to health care redesign. This study will provide preliminary data to support a future larger trial of Family Connect. Dr. Caballero’s research will occur in a supportive, collaborative environment at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, under the guidance of an experienced and dedicated multidisciplinary mentoring team. This team is committed to supporting Dr. Caballero in achieving her research and training goals and her long-term goal of becoming a highly productive independent clinician-investigator and leader in innovative health disparities research to advance SRH access for Latinas.

Key facts

NIH application ID
10931626
Project number
5K23HD110615-02
Recipient
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Principal Investigator
Tania Maria Caballero
Activity code
K23
Funding institute
NIH
Fiscal year
2024
Award amount
$173,880
Award type
5
Project period
2023-09-18 → 2028-08-31