Meharry School of Applied Computational Sciences students Judith Dike and Destiny Pounds have been selected for the Maternal Health Fellowship through the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) network and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) IMPROVE initiative.
Both Dike and Pounds have gained valuable experience in maternal health research as assistants for Aize Cao, Ph.D., chair and professor of biomedical data science.
“This fellowship is a meaningful recognition of the work I've been doing in data science on maternal health outcomes and maternal care,” said Dike, a Ph.D. Data Science student. “It reaffirms that real-world evidence methods and maternal health research are in dire need of attention.”
“My research interests are in maternal mental health and health disparities, so being chosen seems like a great fit,” said Biomedical Data Science student Pounds. “I am grateful for the opportunity to be a part of a program backed by OHDSI and the NIH IMPROVE initiative at this stage of my Ph.D. journey.”
The two-year fellowship trains clinical investigators to improve maternal and neonatal care through three components: Career Development, Practice and Networking. It focuses on observational research methods so fellows can conduct reproducible research, generate real-world evidence, lead multi-institutional network studies and compete successfully for future research funding.
The experience will strengthen their doctoral research through sharpening computational skills and research methods, as well as providing access to valuable, real-world electronic health records (EHR) data.
“My goal for my Ph.D. is to develop computational methods that help providers understand patients more fully, not just through labs and diagnoses, but through the context behind them, like a person's circumstances, barriers and everyday experience,” said Pounds. “EHR data is where much of that context lives, especially in clinical notes, so this fellowship gives me practical tools and training to work with that kind of data effectively.”
The fellowship experience also offers valuable networking opportunities.
“I'm especially grateful for this opportunity, the mentorship, and the community aspect of the fellowship, as well as the chance to get my research and name out there,” said Dike. “As a Ph.D. student, it also gives me access to a global community of researchers within OHDSI to help bridge the gap in maternal health disparities.”
About the NIH IMPROVE Initiative
The NIH launched the IMPROVE initiative in 2019 in response to high rates of pregnancy-related complications and deaths, also called maternal morbidity and mortality, in the United States. The initiative supports research to reduce preventable causes of maternal deaths and improve health for women before, during, and after pregnancy. It includes special emphasis on populations that are disproportionately affected.
About the OHDSI Network
The OHDSI (pronounced “Odyssey”) program is a multi-stakeholder, interdisciplinary collaborative to bring out the value of health data through large-scale analytics. OHDSI has established an international network of researchers and observational health databases with a central coordinating center housed at Columbia University.
