Improving Women's and Children's Health Via Biobanking and Electronic Registry

Pregnancy related diseases and exposures in pregnancy are known risk factors for future disease. For example, women with a history of preeclampsia (a hypertensive disorder in pregnancy) and children born to these women are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. Yet, the mechanisms by which these long term health risks occur are unknown. Clearly, this presents a significant public health hazard as preventative and therapeutic interventions to block these pregnancy related diseases are limited. Current barriers to studying these long-term mechanisms in existing cohorts include 1) lack of paired long-term mother-child data, 2) lack of uniformly collected biosamples and 3) challenges in integrating data from multiple sources and institutions. In particular, data and biosample collection from rural and minority populations present significant challenges. The objective of the iELEVATE proposal is to expand and diversify a current biobank to accelerate long-term translational mechanistic and outcomes research in the vulnerable pregnancy population. We will accomplish this by establishing a widely available biorepository that will collect a first trimester blood and urine sample from pregnant women with a clinical data warehouse and e-registry to support long-term prospective cohort studies.