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UMKC, Saint Luke’s Partner on Four-Year Study to Combat Maternal Mortality

UMKC Healthcare Institute for Innovations in Quality and Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute announced a nationwide study to understand maternal mortality and morbidity. Photo credit: Shutterstock (Freedomz).

Posted September 30, 2024

The UMKC Healthcare Institute for Innovations in Quality and Saint Luke’s Mid-America Heart Institute will work alongside each other to lead a nation wide study to combat maternal mortality.

The four-year observational study, dubbed Heart Outcomes in Pregnancy Expectations (HOPE) for Mom and Baby, will research U.S. pregnant people with cardiovascular disease to better understand and combat maternal mortality and morbidity.

The UMKC Healthcare Institute for Innovations in Quality received $7.9 million from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health to fund the study, according to a release Monday.

The HOPE study, which already has 36 confirmed enrolling sites across the U.S., will track the care and outcomes of 1,000 pregnant individuals with heart disease to help develop better standardized-care protocols.

Cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of maternal death and those who survive often face higher rates of pre-eclampsia, hemorrhage and preterm birth as well as heart failure, stroke, peripheral artery disease and coronary disease.

HOPE was initiated as a two-site pilot by Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City in 2019 at Saint Luke’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

The study will be co-lead by Dr. Anna Grodzinsky, a cardiology specialist at Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City and Dr. Karen Florio, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at UMKC and the University of Missouri, according to the release.