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Promoting Abstinence From Alcohol During Pregnancy: Implications From Formative Research, Kathryn France, Robert Donovan, Nadine Henley, Carol Bower, Elizabeth Elliott, Janet Payne, Heather D'Antoine, Anne Bartu

Research outputs 2013

This research developed messages to promote abstinence from alcohol during pregnancy and identified elements that enhance message persuasiveness. An exploratory phase was conducted in 2009 that comprised four focus groups with 23 women inWestern Australia and elicited beliefs and attitudes on alcohol use during pregnancy and motivations for behavior change. Four television concepts were subsequently developed and appraised in five focus groups with 31 participants using standard advertising pretesting questions. The implications for campaigns addressing prenatal alcohol exposure and further research are noted and limitations discussed. Funding was received from Healthway and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

The Association Between A Medical History Of Depression And Gestational Diabetes In A Large Multi-Ethnic Cohort In The United States, Katherine Bowers, S. Katherine Laughon, Sungduk Kim, Sunni L. Mumford, Jennifer Brite, Michele Kiely, Cuilin Zhang

Publications and Research

Background: Both major depression and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) are prevalent among women of reproductive age. Our objective was to determine whether a medical history of depression is related to subsequent development of GDM.

Methods: The Consortium on Safe Labor was a US retrospective cohort study of 228 562 births between 2002 and 2008. Exclusion criteria for the present analysis included multiple gestation pregnancies (n = 5059), pre-existing diabetes (n = 12 771), deliveries(n = 395), site GDM prevalence (

Results: The final analytic population included 121 260 women contributing 128 295 pregnancies, of which 5606 were affected by GDM. …

Weight Stigma In Maternity Care: Women’S Experiences And Care Providers’ Attitudes, Kate Mulherin, Yvette D. Miller, Fiona Kate Barlow, Phillippa C. Diedrichs, Rachel Thompson

Dartmouth Scholarship

Weight stigma is pervasive in Western society and in healthcare settings, and has a negative impact on victims' psychological and physical health. In the context of an increasing focus on the management of overweight and obese women during and after pregnancy in research and clinical practice, the current studies aimed to examine the presence of weight stigma in maternity care. Addressing previous limitations in the weight stigma literature, this paper quantitatively explores the presence of weight stigma from both patient and care provider perspectives. Study One investigated associations between pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and experiences of maternity care from …

Does Breastfeeding Offer Protection Against Maternal Depressive Symptomatology? A Prospective Study From Pregnancy To 2 Years After Birth, Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, Martie G. Haselton, Christine Dunkel Schetter, Laura M. Glynn

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Depression is the leading cause of disability in women (Nobel 2005) and is the most prevalent of all childbearing-related illnesses, affecting approximately 13% of women worldwide within the first 12 [...] Mothers who breastfeed typically exhibit lower levels of depressive symptomatology than mothers who do not. However, very few studies have investigated the directionality of this relationship. Of the prospective studies published, all but one focus exclusively on whether maternal depression reduces rates of subsequent breastfeeding. This study again examines this relationship, but also the reverse--that breastfeeding might predict lower levels of later depression. Using multilevel modeling, we investigated the …