My project aims to alleviate preventable deaths within postpartum patients in Georgia. Many deaths of postpartum women could have been stopped by adequate postpartum care and education. Being able to notice dangerous symptoms and being able to communicate your concerns to your doctor is vital to ending preventable mortalities.
Through working with the Emory School of Medicine, I have collaborated with doctors in maternal care and public health research and two medical school students specializing in public health to create a postpartum care resource that targets the main cause of death in postpartum women: cardiovascular disease. With the medical students, we have begun to design a website that will be spread through the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Center for Disease Control to educate mothers and their loved ones on symptoms associated with cardiovascular diseases within the postpartum period. Our website features simplified graphics and built in translations to create an accessible source for women of all educational and language backgrounds, and it also includes a formulated script generated by symptoms chosen by postpartum patients. With this script, the patients will be able to effectively communicate their concerns to their doctor especially if they speak a different language.
Our website will hopefully address the lack of postpartum education in maternal care and reduce preventable mortalities of mothers within Georgia.