Gayle Shipp, PhD, RD, assistant professor in the Charles Stewart Mott Department of Public Health, has been awarded a prestigious grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Equity Scholars for Action (HES4A).
Her award is for her proposal, “Evaluating the work of the Revive program in addressing the challenges and disparate outcomes experienced by pregnant individuals in Flint, Michigan.”
According to the CDC, African American women are 2-3x more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women. In Genesee County, over 1,000 babies were born premature or low weight, and almost 14% of African American babies did not live to see their first birthday. Flint has a higher rate of infant mortality - nearly double that of Genesee County, according to the 2023 Health Equity Report Card and may require intervention.
Over the course of the two-year study, Shipp will work in close collaboration with women, families, and community partners to gain a deeper understanding of the trust and acceptance of various community-based programs and initiatives that provide prenatal support to families in Flint.
I will be interfacing with the Flint community to address health disparities as a community-engaged researcher,” said Shipp. “From their community perspective and experiences, I want to learn how we can work together to bridge gaps within maternal and infant health services and programs in the Flint community. Many groups with health disparities have had negative research experiences, leading to distrust of researchers and the research process. I will be thoughtful and intentional about how I interact and conduct research within these communities.
Shipp will collaborate with the Revive Community Health Center to extract program data captured between 2021 and 2024 and conduct retrospective evaluations measuring program impact. Revive is a maternity care support system rooted within the Flint community. Literature suggests maternity care support system models have the potential to improve maternal and infant health; however, there is limited evidence regarding integrated care models and interventions and their effectiveness in practice.
This work is two-fold:
- Share the visibility of Flint’s experience by conducting Flint-focused research support for ongoing funding.
- Evaluate Revive interventions by indicating how a maternity care model is delivered in conjunction with best practices for maximizing success in maternal and infant health outcomes.
Overall, findings from this work have the potential to inform specific policy recommendations innovatively focused on prenatal and postpartum social support, influence programmatic decisions, and disseminate best practices for maternal-infant health interventions that ultimately lead to healthy pregnancy and thriving babies.