The Global Health Experiential Fellowship (GHEF) is a Global South–North simultaneous training program that prepares students and early-career professionals to become global health researchers. Based in rural Uganda, the fellowship offers immersive, mentored experience in study design, data collection, implementation science, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Fellows contribute to ongoing community-based research alongside local partners, gaining practical skills in ethical engagement, cross-cultural research, and field-based methods. GHEF provides a distinctive opportunity to build research capacity, strengthen career development, and contribute to locally led global health initiatives through Empower Through Health.
Patient Population: Perinatal (pregnant and new moms)
Raising Washington
A partnership to provide comprehensive perinatal mental health and parenting support for the first 1,000 days
The Raising Washington Initiative seeks to develop an evidence-based fully integrated perinatal support program that will offer mental health care, parent training and support services for the first 1,000 days of a baby’s life (conception through child’s 2nd birthday) for every high-risk baby born in Washington. This will include creating care pathways informed by the needs of patients and providers, navigators to help guide families through the many care transitions in the perinatal period and accessible information to keep parents and babies healthy.
To learn more this work, please contact Project Manager Lori Ferro, MHA at ljf9@uw.edu.
Empower Through Health
Empower Through Health (ETH) is a healthcare, research, and education 501c3 organization operating in rural eastern Uganda. ETH runs a health center that provides general medical care for surrounding communities and delivers psychiatric and neurological services across Buyende District (population >400,000). ETH’s research focuses on reducing demand-side barriers to care and partnering with existing community structures to improve mental health outcomes and support recovery after mental health crises. ETH hosts the Global Health Experiential Fellowship (GHEF), a hands-on training program that pairs Ugandan and U.S. trainees on community-engaged research. ETH is also expanding its education mission by launching a primary school to strengthen long-term community wellbeing.
Parent-Child Assistance Program – Washington
This project provides direction, training, technical assistance, and evaluation of the Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP) being implemented by 13 community agencies and 15 sites serving 20 counties and up to 1490 mothers/families in Washington State.
Parent-Child Assistance Program – Oklahoma
This project seeks to compare the effectiveness of the Parent-Child Assistance Program (PCAP) to services as usual in the state of Oklahoma using a randomized, controlled design.
Collaborative care for perinatal mental health – the LAMMHA project
Los Angeles Maternal Mental Health Access (LAMMHA) is a five year program (2022 – 2027) funded by The California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) to support health centers in Los Angeles to identify and treat common perinatal mental disorders (CPMD) and reduce the risk of suicide. The LAMMHA initiative is a collaboration between Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County (CCALAC), Elevation Health Partners (EHP), Maternal Mental Health Now (MMHN), Concert Health and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington. Co-created with Los Angeles community stakeholders, the LAMMHA program currently offers Los Angeles County providers and community clinics two different levels of support to improve perinatal mental health care.
For more information and/or to apply for the program, please visit the CCALAC LAMMHA page: https://ccalac.org/los-angeles-maternal-mental-health-access-lammha/.
Leveraging peer mentor texting to support maternal wellbeing in the perinatal period
Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders affect one in seven pregnant and postpartum women nationwide, making them the most common complication of pregnancy. Unfortunately, only one in 20 women who need treatment for these conditions actually receives it. This translates to a multigenerational issue, which can negatively affect the mother and child’s long-term physical, emotional and developmental health. It also means an estimated $14.2 billion annually in societal costs in the U.S. alone. While not every perinatal individual with mental health concerns has access to a mental health provider, cell phones and text messaging are ubiquitous. Nonjudgmental support delivered through text messaging may be a low cost approach to reaching women who need emotional support in the perinatal period.
Our project aims to evaluate a text-based mentoring program, the Nurture Program, and assess whether it is possible to support mothers through their third trimester of pregnancy and nine months postpartum and enhance their emotional well-being. The Nurture Program combines the convenience of secure text messaging with the personalization of having a trained peer mentor with whom the mother can develop a trusting relationship. This program also provides resources on child development, connections to local support agencies and suggestions for parent-child bonding and parental wellness activities. Surveyed participants of the Nurture Program consistently report their mentor helped them feel less stressed and more confident in their role as a parent. This study will allow us to measure the impact of this cost-effective approach to promoting perinatal emotional well-being.
A dyadic approach to perinatal depression treatment in primary care
Perinatal depression affects 10-20% of pregnant and postpartum individuals, impairing parenting self-efficacy and mother-infant interactions and contributing to negative maternal-child outcomes. This research will test comprehensive perinatal depression treatment, Maternal Infant and Dyadic Care (MInD), which includes a brief version of the Promoting First Relationships parenting intervention implemented within perinatal collaborative care, against perinatal collaborative care (CC) only. The aims of this study are to (1) compare the effects of MInD vs. usual perinatal CC on depression, (2) explore associations between parenting self-efficacy, dyadic interaction, and depression to inform a mediational hypothesis, and (3) examine and compare care utilization, trial feasibility, and perceived match of treatment to patient need.
Evaluating Lifelines4Moms (ELM) Study
Perinatal depression affects 10-15% of pregnant and postpartum individuals, with detrimental impacts on both parent and infant. In response to this, our department developed a perinatal consultation line for providers, PAL for Moms, to increase access to specialty perinatal psychiatric expertise and care. The purpose of the Evaluating Lifeline4Moms (ELM) is to assess comparative effectiveness of PAL for Moms and other perinatal psychiatry access and referral programs in addressing maternal depression.
As a community-engaged research endeavor, ELM has convened patient advocates, policy experts, and perinatal clinicians, who oversee the study as partners and advisors. Over a period of three years, the research team will characterize the components, implementation timelines, and state policy contexts of access and referral programs; evaluate the reach and implementation of these programs; and examine the comparative effects on access to and quality of mental health treatment among Medicaid-insured perinatal individuals.
Washington State COVID-19 pregnancy collaborative
The objective of this proposal was to investigate the effects of a highly communicable infectious disease leading to severe pneumonia and death (COVID-19) in pregnant women in Washington State. Pregnant women are typically a highly vulnerable group to pathogenic respiratory viruses and have the highest WHO priority for influenza vaccination in a pandemic.
The team’s central hypothesis was that COVID-19 infections in pregnancy increase the risk for spontaneous abortion, preterm birth, stillbirth, intrauterine growth restriction and mental health disorders in the mother. They conducted a multi-site prospective chart review of prenatal and neonatal medical records across the majority of health systems in Western Washington (6 hospitals/hospital systems, >20 investigators). Overall, the Washington State COVID-19 in Pregnancy Collaborative sites captured approximately 61% of deliveries in Washington State during the study period.
The team successfully collected data to establish a large, population-based registry in Washington State. Analyses have been completed of the sociodemographic and clinical outcomes of 240 pregnant patients who contracted COVID-19. Work remains ongoing to calculate infection rates, disease severity, co-morbidity, symptom length and possible vascular injury that could impair fetal growth.
The team will continue working toward research to determine how COVID-19 impacts maternal-child physical and mental health. Further grants have been applied and awarded from the Center of Disease Control, Royalty Research Fund and partnerships with Washington State Department of Health.
