# KY INBRE NOSI Supplement: Identification of Personalized Treatment Targets in Pregnant and Postpartum Women

> **NIH NIH P20** · UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE · 2024 · $313,000

## Abstract

Project Summary Abstract
One in 20 pregnant women in the United States have clinically severe disordered eating (DE)
symptoms during pregnancy, such as intentional vomiting, food restriction, and binge eating. DE
during pregnancy is related to serious mental, emotional, and physical impairments, as well as
pregnancy complications. Specifically, DE greatly increases the risk of miscarriage,
hemorrhage, severe/prolonged vomiting, preterm birth, low birth weight, birth defects,
impairments, and death, and doubles risk of severe anxiety and depression. DE
disproportionally impacts women during reproductive years, and pregnant and postpartum
women face unique challenges in this period, such as societal pressures (e.g., fear of gaining
“too much” baby weight, pressure to lose weight quickly after pregnancy), along with pregnancy
symptoms (e.g., difficulty eating, bodily changes, morning sickness). These vulnerabilities
exacerbate DE, and risk of devastating health and pregnancy outcomes for mothers and infants.
This proposal will modify our personalized self-guided system to identify treatment targets to
ultimately address the unique presentation of the symptoms that drive DE in pregnant and
postpartum women. There are currently no personalized digital self-guided interventions for this
high-risk population. Thus, this supplement is to develop and modify a personalized, self-
guided, digital intervention to address DE in pregnant and postpartum women. First, using
idiographic models, we aim to identify the frequency of the most problematic symptoms that
drive DE in this high-risk population (N=60). Second, we aim to modify and test if our digital
therapeutic to address treatment targets personalized for pregnant and postpartum women
reduces DE and increases their quality of life. Our highly novel methods are packaged within a
digitalized program delivered directly to these high-risk women to intervene on the most
problematic symptoms in a personalized manner within their day-to-day life, to improve access
to care. This proposal is in-line with the parent grant, to provide the growth of our current
mentorship training and research experiences for students, and support three early career
researchers to be competitive for further independent funding. We aim to provide relevant and
personalized DE interventions for pregnant and postpartum women, to reduce the risk for
impairment and mortalities for both mother and infant.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10953880
- **Project number:** 3P20GM103436-24S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE
- **Principal Investigator:** MARTHA E BICKFORD
- **Activity code:** P20 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $313,000
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2001-09-30 → 2029-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10953880

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10953880, KY INBRE NOSI Supplement: Identification of Personalized Treatment Targets in Pregnant and Postpartum Women (3P20GM103436-24S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-14 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10953880. Licensed CC0.

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