Project 456943

Over the past two decades, an increasing number of Canadian women have experienced serious health issues due to, and/or made worse by, pregnancy. This is known as "severe maternal morbidity" (SMM). SMM includes about 40 life-threatening pregnancy conditions. SMM may create a harmful environment for the unborn baby, or it may introduce harm to the child around the time of its birth. The degree to which SMM can affect the health of the baby is under-studied. Our project will be the first Canadian study to see if there is a connection between SMM and the well-being of the baby, including the infant developing a composite of severe neonatal morbidity (SNM). We will also look at other factors, such as where a woman lives, and her social and economic status, and how these factors can amplify the relation between SMM and adverse newborn. To do so, we will use existing information of 4 million mom-baby pairs within a large Canadian health database. We believe that our research will help practitioners to not only prevent or treat SMM, but to also improve the condition of the unborn baby, and the subsequent health of the newborn baby, by preventing SNM. Since Canadian healthcare can differ by province or territory, we also wish to identify ways to optimize SMM prevention or early treatment across jurisdictions. An example of the latter would be to disseminate existing evidence-based standardized protocols for preventing mom-baby infection, and to facilitate equitable transport of high-risk mothers to specialty care centres equipped with the right resources for moms and babies-to-be.