Now available, our new Illustrated Symptoms Tear Pad was developed in collaboration with health services researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. The tool effectively informs pregnant women, even those with potentially poor literacy, about preeclampsia. Because preeclampsia is a disorder that can have grave consequences for a mother and her unborn baby, the goal is for the tool to offer information in a way that allows women to assimilate and retain knowledge related to preeclampsia, leading them to promptly seek medical attention should they have symptoms related to preeclampsia.

Findings from a study published in  American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology (May 2012) and funded by the Preeclampsia Foundation, supported the Foundation's long-held belief that knowing the symptoms of this life-threatening disorder of pregnancy would help empower women to secure the care they need. The results of this study prompted the Foundation to mass produce this educational tool in the form of a single-sided tear pad.  

The English version of the Illustrated Preeclampsia Symptoms Tear Pad is now ready for distribution to health care providers and can be obtained through our online Marketplace for just the cost of shipping and handling. Spanish tear pads will be printed next, pending funding support. We are very excited to put this evidence-based tool in the hands of all who provide prenatal care and counsel pregnant women.

Recognizing the importance of patient education in efforts to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity, the  California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC), reviewed and adopted the tear pad into their Preeclampsia Toolkit. Now, it will be distributed and used by hundreds of hospitals in California.

Local health departments provide health services to members of their community and can make use of an effective educational tool. With that in mind, The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) will be sharing the Illustrated Preeclampsia Symptoms Tear Pad with more than 2800 local health departments nationwide.  

"This tool will be useful in providing health education to prenatal women receiving a variety of services at local health departments" said Robert Pestronk, Executive Director of NACCHO. "Pregnancy-related death continues to be an important public health concern. Information that can prevent up to half of the most serious preeclampsia-related outcomes, such as maternal mortality, should be accessible to all pregnant women - regardless of socioeconomic status or education level."

"It is our hope that women who understand and recognize the warning symptoms associated with preeclampsia will be more likely to seek timely and appropriate care," said Dr. Whitney You, the principal investigator for the research study which developed the tool. "Patient education should work in concert with clinical and laboratory initiatives aimed at treating preeclampsia to ultimately reduce the morbidity and mortality that stems from the disease. It is important to recognize that even if we were to develop the perfect therapy or cure for preeclampsia, its value is greatly reduced if women fail to seek appropriate care."  

One of the benefits of the Illustrated Symptoms Tear Pad is its application in a multitude of settings and languages. With some minor language translation and a check on cultural sensitivity, we are eager to equip health care providers in low resource settings with this important patient and community education tool.

Nadine Brunk, a Certified Nurse-Midwife, started a program called Midwives for Haiti (MFH). We've been talking to Nadine about how we can extend our work in patient and community education to prenatal care settings like those found in Haiti. 

Recently four midwives went to the rural town of Saltadere, Haiti, to do a monthly prenatal clinic. There, they found themselves with five preeclamptic women, an hour from the closest hospital. Here's a link to Nadine's amazing story of