Pregnancy

Four Hands: Mother, Baby, Father, Doctor.

Shifting perspectives: A personal story of maternal health and outcomes

Jessie Nelson

“I stepped into the all-familiar Michigan Medicine hospital. This time, however, my perspective was more than a little bit different. I had wandered these halls just weeks prior—not as a patient, but as a medical student. Now, I entered as an expectant mother.”

plantbased_pregnant

Is It Safe to Eat Plant-Based While Pregnant?

Elizabeth Baldwin

Maintaining vegan and vegetarian diets has gotten easier as the plant-based food options have become more widely accessible. While plant-based diets can be considered healthy in many ways, vegan and vegetarian expectant mothers may need to be more vigilant in understanding what they're consuming to ensure they're getting the proper nutrition during pregnancy.

Health care worker taking a patient's blood pressure in a clinic

Should I Take the COVID Vaccine as a Minority?

Anita Pandit, MS ’16

How are managing mental health and receiving a COVID vaccine similar? They both require minorities to have some level of trust in health sciences and the people administering their health care. Alum Anita Pandit walks us through the good and the bad reasons not getting a vaccine—and why she will be getting one.

A black mother stands on a beach while holding her infant

Infant Mortality among Black Babies

Utibe Effiong, MPH ’14, Ekemini Hogan, and Obasi Okorie

It’s a painful statistical fact that Black babies die at higher rates than White babies—a fact all the more painful and tragic for those living with the realities of infant mortality. The difference in death rates is shared by developing and developed nations alike. But the trend can and must change.

Antibiotic pills displayed in a pill bottle

Antibiotic Use during Pregnancy: Too Much of a Good Thing?

Lixin Zhang, PhD ’99

The discovery and use of antibiotics is one of public health’s great achievements, but antibiotic use is not without its problems. At therapeutic doses, antibiotics exert a strong selection pressure on the microbial community. When antibiotics interact with an infant’s developing microbiome, they can affect gut health and with it the child’s health for years to come.