Project Summary
Maternal depression is a public health crisis, with most estimates of incidence ranging from 10-15 percent nationwide. Maternal depression is also a problem of inequity: Minority women and women with social disadvantage experience depression at much higher rates than their more privileged counterparts. There is clear evidence that maternal depression can negatively impact child well-being and development, setting up an intergenerational transmission of health inequities. Although there are a variety of effective and evidence-based treatments for maternal depression, most depressed women do not access care.
The overarching goal of the San Francisco County EMBRACES (Engaging with Mothers and others to Bolster Research And Create Effective Solutions for) Maternal Depression project is to develop stakeholder partnership and infrastructure to support patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR) that will promote maternal, family, and community wellbeing.
The project aims to partner with San Francisco County women who have experienced maternal depression and the community-based organizations serving them to develop a PCOR infrastructure for maternal depression; foster communication between patient partners, other key stakeholders, and multidisciplinary UCSF researchers to facilitate PCOR for maternal depression; develop a PCOR strategic plan for maternal depression implementation efforts in SF County with patient partners and other stakeholders; and interface with statewide efforts to disseminate our process and findings across California and nationally.
Activities will include creating small working groups that link patient partners, community partners, and UCSF researchers; convening monthly advisory board meetings and a shared online communication tool that will solicit input and feedback from stakeholders; and holding two county-wide key stakeholder engagement events to align priorities across sectors and create a shared vision for shared research and data.
Anticipated outcomes include developing a comprehensive strategic plan to conduct PCOR focused on maternal depression treatment and access for the most at-risk women and families in SF County, and producing an online toolkit to be housed on the Solid Start website, http://solidstart.ucsf.edu/, that can be used by other counties and systems of care to develop and implement PCOR strategies for maternal depression. Because many of the services and sectors leveraged in the development of our model are available across county systems (including safety net clinical setting, department of public health, community-based partners) our approach for implementing patient-centered maternal depression research can be feasibly scaled up.
We will partner with patients and other stakeholders through advisory board meetings, smaller working groups, and in the development of our strategic plan and online toolkit. Our patient and stakeholder partners will be co-collaborators throughout the award process.