We are proud to announce that the Supporting Our Ladies And Reducing Stress to Prevent Preterm Birth (SOLARS) will be launching on February 1st! SOLARS is one of the first, large-scale studies, designed by women of color, to help us understand the impact of stress, anxiety, and racism - in addition to resilience and coping - on preterm birth. The study, designed by women of color and by women who have delivered preterm, aims give us a better understanding of the causes of preterm birth among women of color. The data we collect that includes participants' survey answers and biospecimens may help us unlock new pathways, discoveries, and findings that could and should lead to effective interventions to decrease risk for preterm birth in communities of color. The study hopes to recruit 500 women over the next two years.
Drs. Laura Jelliffe-Pawlowski and Brittany Chambers, co-Principal Investigators on the study noted:
"This study is unique because we are partnering with Black and Latina women to understand how chronic stressors like exposures to racism, perceived stress, intimate partner violence, and pregnancy-related anxiety gets under the skin to impact gestational duration and preterm birth. We suspect that stress does impact gestational duration and preterm birth through pathways like immune function and protein signaling. By improving our understanding of these interrelationships we hope to design more effective interventions aimed at reducing stress and increasing gestational duration in partnership with communities most impacted."
