Psychosocial Intervention, Maternal Inflammation, and Birth Outcomes: Centering vs Routine Prenatal Care (PIINC)

Co-Investigator, Gregory Miller, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University Miller is Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research. His research focuses on identifying biological mechanisms that underlie socioeconomic disparities in health. Miller has been Principal Investigator of multiple large-scale studies funded by NIH, CIHR, and private foundations, many of which assess the same inflammatory and transcriptional processes that are proposed here. As Co-Investigator, Miller’s roles will be to (a) advise Dr. Borders on issues related to patient recruitment, assessment, and specimen collection (b) provide input on the conceptual and mechanistic basis for linkages between socioeconomic, psychosocial, and biological data, (c) oversee staff who are conducting the immunoassays for measurement of ongoing inflammation (d) actively participate in the analysis and interpretation of biological data, and co-author manuscripts that result. Laboratory Staff: Paula Ham, B.A. - Responsible for homogenizing and dissociating placenta biopsies, preparing lysates from which RNA will be extracted. Given sample size and flow, expect to perform about 6 each week for Y1-2, which takes one full day of effort. Also responsible for conducting multiplex immunoassays to measure expression of cytokines in maternal serum. She will run 1800 samples in Y3-4, then organize, manage, and do preliminary analyses of data in Y5.