Author Heather Reis, center, with members of her team at The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute, from left. Front: Ashaki Smith and Anna Kheyfets; Back: Teresa Janevic, Tracy Layne, Elizabeth Howell, and Amy Balbierz

I had a background in genetics and started my career as a laboratory scientist before pivoting to the field of reproductive medicine. That’s when I found a love of helping people in a new way: from beyond a lab bench.

I recognized I had a deep interest in women’s health and helping provide health care opportunities for those who previously did not have access to them. At that point, I started working with egg donors and families who needed third party reproduction services in order to start a family.

Then I went back to school to get an MBA in order to learn more about how to combine business with my background in science and women’s health research. I knew that improving on my management, analytical, and marketing skills would allow me to achieve my goals of helping others in a way that was practical and made sense for me. And it worked.

Transitioning to my role as a project manager in the Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science Department at the Mount Sinai Health System seemed like an ideal way to expand upon my previous experiences.  Becoming more hands on in a position at the intersection of administrative executives and physicians, and seeing how my impact can make a difference, is an exciting challenge.

Since joining Mount Sinai in October 2018, I’ve been fortunate to experience both personal and professional development. I’ve always had a goal of helping others and having a positive impact on the community, and I find that in my role I can achieve this.

As a project manager I work on special projects and operations alignment opportunities. This involves making sure each division within the Department communicates and shares best practices and ways to improve with a broader goal of achieving better outcomes and continuing to be one of the best health care systems in New York City. I also assist with administrative work surrounding appointments and promotions in the Department, which includes onboarding new physicians, maintaining credentialing, and updating and creating contracts.

One of the greatest pleasures working at Mount Sinai has been my opportunity to join the staff of the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute. Working with the team at the Institute has been a rewarding experience. Being able to work with others who share a passion for women’s health, while working on expanding the research opportunities at Mount Sinai and beyond, keeps me engaged and focused on current trends in the women’s health field. The Institute seeks to address women’s health concerns across the lifespan by engaging in research, education, and networking activities that foster a positive community in search of a common goal.

The team at the Institute is inspiring, energetic, intelligent, and hard working. Whether it’s planning the Inaugural Women’s Health Research Symposium, attending the informational seminar series discussions, or competing with each other in the Reach Your Peak Wellness Initiative (a system-wide wellness program encouraging teamwork and healthy habits with the goal of increasing physical activity) I continue to be excited about the work being done at the Institute and look forward to the many opportunities ahead. The monthly Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute Seminar Series offers lectures on a variety of topics in women’s health and I encourage anyone looking to learn more about a wide range of topics at the forefront of women’s health research to join us. 

Heather Reis, MBA, uses her experience, education, and personal interests to foster her career as an administrative women’s health professional. As a project manager in the OB/GYN department and member of The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she continues to develop her passion for women’s health current topics and innovation.

Chelsi West Ohueri, PhD, is a sociocultural anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research is closely related to the work at The Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute, and her personal story underscores the importance of bringing evidence-based research to the public. We are privileged to honor her powerful perspective as a guest contributor. – Teresa Janevic, PhD, Member of the Institute, Assistant Professor of Population Health Science and Policy, and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

 It was Christmas Eve. I was in the hospital emergency room, just four days after what had been a normal delivery of my second child. As I lay on the bed moving in and out of the CT scanner, I tried to remain still and slow the panic in my mind. My left breast was full of breast milk that had just come in. The pain in my head was wrenching. I worried whether I would ever hold my newborn daughter and her sister again.

I had good reason to be concerned.

I am a cultural anthropologist and I research race, belonging, and inequality. One of my research areas includes health disparities, specifically the social and root causes of racial and ethnic inequities. As a social force, racism dehumanizes and assigns value, and as a result, there are varying health impacts. My research and scholarship examine how structural and systemic racism in particular impacts Black people and people of color.

It was during this period in 2018 that numerous news outlets – ProPublica, NPR, USA Today – were discussing the increasing maternal mortality rate in the United States. And Black women were dying at even higher rates.

Also, I had had complications during my first delivery three years earlier.

My first pregnancy included quite a bit of nausea and vomiting, but aside from this, it was pretty typical. My child however, was not quite ready to make her appearance until almost 42 weeks. The labor was slow and onerous, lasting 33 hours. After an additional three hours of pushing, my baby was yet to be born.

At some point I began to shiver, my palms were sweaty, and my heart rate was more rapid. I was extremely fatigued from the labor but in that moment, I felt very different. The nurse, however, delayed contacting the doctor. She kept insisting that I was experiencing side effects from the anesthesia. Then the nurse became unresponsive, maintaining that there was no need to contact the physician. When I asked if she could take my vitals she did, and got a high temperature read but then kept wondering if something was wrong with her thermometer. She kept reiterating that everything was fine and that she just needed to check her equipment. I asked again if she could contact the physician and my husband did as well.

Finally, at the urging of my mother, who is a physician, the nurse eventually went to get my doctor, who, upon seeing me and my temperature reading, said we needed to act quickly because I had more than likely developed an infection. A second doctor came into the room and said they had to quickly get me to the OR for an emergency C-section. My temperature was 103.9. The diagnosis was chorioamnioitis, an infection of the placenta and the amniotic fluid. My baby was delivered and had to spend a week in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. We were both treated with antibiotics. Though we were both able to be healthily discharged after a week, the feelings of not being listened to, of being dismissed and devalued, remained with me.

As a result, my first doctor’s visit during my second pregnancy in 2018 began with the retelling of the first delivery story. I had a new doctor, a Black woman, mostly because we had moved to a new part of the city. After my previous experience, it was important for me to build a trusting relationship with my medical care team.

Throughout my second pregnancy I worked on multiple research projects about race and health disparities. Between my own pregnancy and my work, it was difficult to escape the issue of maternal mortality. People would often tell me not to worry about “those bad things” while I was pregnant, but as a Black woman in the United States and as a researcher, I was unsure how someone could not worry about potential problems, especially in a moment of such urgency. Compared to white women, Black women in the United States are 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes.      

I often thought about Shalon Irving, a Black woman with a PhD who worked for the Centers for Disease Control. Like me, she was a health disparities researcher. Only weeks after giving birth to her first child, she died from complications of high blood pressure, even though she was seen by multiple medical professionals during the early postpartum period. I also thought about Kira Johnson, a second-time mother who died just ten hours after giving birth because of excessive bleeding. Her husband told stories about delayed attention from health care providers, even though his wife complained of severe pain as her catheter filled with blood. 

My second C-section was scheduled at 39 weeks, and the procedure went smoothly and according to plan. At discharge my baby and I were both healthy, and my doctor noted that recovery from a second C-section is often easier than the first. We were discharged on December 20 and made our way home to adjust to our new life as a family of four.

On Christmas Eve night I was sitting on the couch and watching television with my mother. I began having abdominal pain on my right side. The pain was sharp, but I assumed it was gas, a common symptom after delivery. I mentioned the pain to my mother who suggested that I look for some gas medication in the bathroom. At that point my head began to hurt as well. But I suffer from migraines and was exhausted from the initial days of sleeplessness with a toddler and newborn. When I stood to go look for medicine, however, it felt as if my skull was being seared, and the pain rushed down the back of my neck. Then my vision went blurry and I could not see. I stumbled back to the couch. My mother jumped up, grabbed my robe, put some socks on my feet, and walked me to the car. She put the baby in the car seat just as my husband and daughter were returning home from a Christmas Eve service. We all immediately drove to the hospital.

When I arrived at the ER, I was quickly wheeled to triage, and the nurse took my blood pressure. It was 198/95. It would actually increase to over 200/100 before the medicine fully kicked in. The staff at the hospital acted quickly, sending me for a CT scan to check for brain bleeds, giving medication for the pain, drawing blood, and beginning a magnesium sulfate bag, all standard care for what I learned was postpartum preeclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that results in high blood pressure. I had never had any symptoms of preeclampsia, never had even a slightly elevated blood pressure reading during pregnancy, or in my life for that matter. Prior to this, I did not even know that preeclampsia could occur after delivery. Yet there I was, Christmas Eve night, in a hospital bed, unable to move, full of worry.

Fortunately, my health care providers acted swiftly. I was admitted immediately and received excellent care. But this is not the case for many other Black women.

Since 1996, researchers have known that the top reasons for maternal mortality among Black women are hemorrhage, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and embolism. Oftentimes, the conversation about these areas quickly turns to patients’ lifestyles and behavior, but this conversation needs to be refocused. First, there needs to be an examination of what happens when patients present with symptoms during and after birth, and the ways that Black women of many backgrounds, are often dismissed and not believed, as was shown in the case of the Serena Williams story. Second, there is a need for more research about the impact of racism on the physical body throughout the life course. Third, it is time for the health care field to reckon with systemic racial inequities. The current system is failing Black mothers. 

 As a research fellow at a medical school I had the opportunity to talk with many health care providers, and have even facilitated discussions around race and equity. I would regularly hear from people who felt that they respected all patients, but our current state of racial health disparities is not simply about a matter of respect. A health care provider may believe that they are offering the same level of care for all patients but still carry out practices that are shaped by deeply imbedded forms of racism. Health care is considered a helping profession, but if that help is not equitable and is steeped in unexamined racism, then it can harm more than it helps. 

Chelsi West Ohueri, PhD, is a sociocultural anthropologist with research interests in race, structural inequality, marginalization, and health disparities in Eastern Europe and the United States. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently working on a book project that examines racialization and belonging in Albania and Southeastern Europe.

Shuto Orizari, a municipality in Skopje, Macedonia, with a majority Roma population

I first became aware of the deplorable health disadvantage of Roma, the largest minority group in Europe, in 2006. At the time, I was an epidemiology doctoral student at Columbia University working on a study that demonstrated the harmful effects of lead exposure during pregnancy from a smelter in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. I learned from an article in The New York Times that Romani children in United Nations refugee camps were suffering from severe lead poisoning due to living in U.N. refugee camps placed by the same lead smelter. I was outraged and quickly penned a Letter to the Editor. My eyes were opened to how structural racism can affect health in diverse social and historical contexts, and I decided to use my knowledge and training to call attention to the impact of racism on the health disadvantage of Romani women.

The first step was to build relationships in the field with Romani NGOs in Serbia and Macedonia. As I spoke with local gynecologists and Romani women, I was struck again by the similarities between what I knew about racism and maternal health in the United States and what I was seeing and hearing in the Balkans. I heard a Romani woman describe how she lay bleeding after childbirth and felt ignored by staff. I heard a gynecologist attribute poor birth outcomes of Romani women to genetics. I saw neighborhoods that were predominantly Romani with no access to a gynecologist.

These experiences made me think of the powerful work of Camara Jones, MD, PhD, MPH, Senior Fellow at the Satcher Health Leadership Institute and Cardiovascular Research Institute at the Morehouse School of Medicine, on how race is a sociologic construct, and how racism operates at various levels—institutional, interpersonal, and internalized—to create and perpetuate health inequalities.

International discourse on how to dismantle the impact of racism on maternal health may help us learn together how to achieve health equity within and across borders, writes Teresa Janevic, PhD, MPH, a perinatal epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Although race wasn’t a concept frequently applied in the Balkan context, I used Dr. Jones’ framework in my research to show how racism influences access to maternal health care and delivering a low birth weight infant among Romani women. Back in the United States, in an ongoing research project on racial-ethnic discrimination during obstetric care, I can hear echoes of the voices of Romani women in the black and Latina women’s stories describing feelings of being ignored and given low priority.

Recently, I was invited by the International Journal of Public Health to contribute an editorial on the progress to the goal of improving the health of Roma, in which I noted positive steps but an overall lack of evidence on improved health equity. Since that 2006 article in The New York Times article, news headlines now often feature “Roma” instead of the pejorative term “Gypsy”, a marker of some progress in international awareness of Roma identity and human rights. However, where have we come in advancing Romani maternal and child health, and what is next? In my editorial, I outline several paths forward for research. Again, despite the distinct historical and political contexts, there are commonalities with the struggle for maternal health equity in the United States:

1. Building equity-sensitive surveillance systems: Vital statistics systems lack detailed information on ethnic background in the Balkans for maternal and child health surveillance, and data on disparities in health care quality is sorely lacking. In the United States, we have somewhat more advanced systems for surveillance. But, as Elizabeth Howell, MD, MPP, Director of the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute, recently pointed out in testimony before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, we lack quality metrics to sufficiently monitor disparities in quality of obstetric care, and we must support infrastructure to improve data collection and measurement.
2. Rigorously evaluating health interventions and policy: The impact of policies across sectors on maternal health equity is not sufficiently evaluated. Research on the social determinants of maternal morbidity and mortality in the United States has been limited in scope and lacks a focus on macro-level determinants. Likewise, in the Balkans, policies implemented across sectors for Roma inclusion have not been sufficiently evaluated in regard to their impact on maternal and child health. Tools provided by implementation science may assist in identifying why interventions and policies do or don’t work to improve equity. To cite an example from the Balkans, health mediators are one of the most widely implemented health interventions targeting Romani women, yet an implementation science study brought to focus factors weakening their impact, such as insufficient numbers and lack of systematization. Implementation science can play in a role in the United States by testing if quality improvement efforts are equitably implemented.
3. Disrupting structural racism through workforce development and civil society building: Programs to strengthen and increase the diversity of the public health workforce, particularly in non-European Union countries with large populations of Roma, are essential to shift the structures of power and privilege in health systems. A successful program in Serbia showcases the potential of this approach. It is also essential to include Romani women in policy discussions across sectors. In the United States, workforce development to increase the diversity of the maternal and child health workforce is crucial. Both at home and abroad, training in implicit bias and health care discrimination of health care professionals is needed, not only in trainees, but also in the field.

The late Esma Redzepova, queen of Romani music and an activist who fought for the rights of Romani women, defined racism as “the poisonous shafts of contempt and intolerance.” International discourse on how to dismantle the impact of racism on maternal health may help us learn together how to achieve health equity within and across borders.

Teresa Janevic, PhD, MPH, is a perinatal epidemiologist and Assistant Professor in the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Janevic’s research focuses on how social determinants such as neighborhoods, racism, migration, and policy influence maternal and child health.

Whitney Lieb, MD, MPH, dispensing medication in a clinic in Jamaica.

With a background in public health and a desire to create sustainable global health projects, I was excited about the opportunity to join the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute and develop the research skills needed to enhance women’s health services around the world.  And as I complete my first year in the Women’s Health Scholars Program, I can now reflect on what I have learned.

Before joining the Institute, I completed a fellowship in Global Women’s Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  I focused my fellowship on international residency training, health workforce capacity, and HPV screening and treatment, among other critical global health issues affecting women.

As part of my global health work I traveled to Nepal, Uganda, Jamaica, and Liberia, however, some of my global health work is also done in the United States. Specifically, I work with Physicians for Human Rights as a volunteer faculty member in the Mount Sinai Human Rights Program aiding victims of female genital mutilation, domestic violence, and sex trafficking in their applications for asylum in the United States.

At the Institute, I have strengthened my skills in biostatistics, epidemiology, research design, data analysis, informatics, bioethics, and grant writing.  I have learned how to create and analyze biostatistical models and successfully collaborated on research projects while developing advanced analytical strategies that I can apply to my research questions.

One of my ongoing research projects is defining the prevalence of hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV among health care workers at the largest tertiary hospital in Liberia. I conducted this study as a Global Women’s Health Fellow under the guidance of Ann Marie Beddoe, MD, MPH, a gynecologic oncologist and an Institute faculty member, in collaboration with on the ground partners in Liberia. Armed with these new analytical skills, I am excited to explore the data in hopes of furthering vaccination efforts among health care workers in Liberia.

The Women’s Health Scholars Program, with the Master of Science in Clinical Research, has thus far provided me with rigorous training in patient and population-based research, and prepared me for life-long learning in scientific discovery, clinical innovation, science education, and health policy.  I feel honored to be a part of the Institute—under the guidance of Elizabeth Howell, MD, MPP, Director of the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute and a Professor in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Population Health Science and Policy at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai—and to have the opportunity to prepare for an academic career in women’s health research.

I look forward to the year ahead.

Whitney Lieb, MD, MPH, is the current Women’s Health Scholar with the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute.  She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

As an expert in psychiatric disorders during pregnancy and the postpartum period, Veerle Bergink, MD, PhD, understands the importance of mental health, specifically during these periods in a woman’s life.

“The mental health of the mother has a major impact on her baby,” said Dr. Bergink, a Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, and Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Bergink, a faculty member at the Blavatnik Family Women’s Health Research Institute, noted how physical changes during pregnancy are intrinsically tied to the mom’s environment, her mental health, and the baby’s development.

In a video Q&A, Dr. Bergink discussed maternal mental health in observance of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month in May 2019. Her research focuses on psychiatric disorders during pregnancy and the postpartum period, and she is currently developing a women’s mental health research program at Mount Sinai.

There is a difference between “Baby Blues” and postpartum depression, she says. “It is normal for women having a child to feel low now and then,” Dr. Bergink said about the prevalence of feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and sadness. But the symptoms of postpartum depression are more serious and can last longer. Dr. Bergink went on to discuss how anxiety and depression affect women during this period of high expectations, both from herself and the world around her and how loved ones can help the mom experiencing these symptoms get through them.

Dr. Bergink’s work also includes the association of primary education and maternal mental disorders, the mother’s use of lithium as treatment for mental disorders during breastfeeding, parental psychopathology as a risk factor for bipolar disorder and the importance of emergency care in preventing infanticide and suicide in the postpartum period.

We look forward to more cutting-edge women’s mental health research from Dr. Bergink!