Maternal adaptive capacity to cardiovascular morbidity and mortality

Women who are at-risk for maternal morbidity and mortality are often viewed through a problematic lens in research. When researchers look only for risk, at-risk populations begin to be viewed through a lens of deficit. This deficit discourse involving at-risk and vulnerable populations can further exacerbate risk by promoting bias. The purpose of this solution is to look at at-risk individuals through a lens of strength.

Our hypothesis is that there are women at significant risk for maternal morbidity and mortality who demonstrate a behavioral adaptive capacity to risk. We consider women with risk factors for poor maternal outcomes who demonstrate good outcomes as “risk resilient” and demonstrating an adaptive capacity.

Our data solution looks for behavioral strengths in women at-risk for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Using 15 potential strength behavioral variables, models were run within the at-risk group to identify women who were resilient to negative outcomes. Our findings support that engaging in physical activity in later pregnancy and getting adequate sleep may be protective behavioral assets demonstrated by risk resilient women. Future research can be conducted using these strengths to develop interventions to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality for at-risk women.

This preprint contains the NICHD Decoding Maternal Morbdity Data Challenge solution manuscript and the Github repository information.