Expectations: Help put the happy back into birthdays!

SEPTEMBER 2015

PREECLAMPSIA FOUNDATION NEWS

Help put the happy back into birthdays!

Whether it's the loss of an angel baby or a mom, or the loss of your expected birth experience, we know that preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome hinder our ability to celebrate birth events at the time. That's why we're throwing a virtual birthday party -- to help put the happy back into birthdays. And you're invited!

Join the festivities from the comfort of your home to help us continue our mission of hope for moms and babies everywhere! RSVP to this Facebook Event and share it with your friends and family. Also share with us on the event wall what you're honoring this year!

As part of the fun, we're hosting an online auction through eBay Giving Works. This special eBay program raises awareness and support for non-profit organizations like the Preeclampsia Foundation.

You're invited to help us raise funds by selling, shopping, or making direct donations through this online eBay auction that extends through October 30. Whether you're familiar with eBay or not, you can do this! We can do this, together. You can set up your own online auction (here's how) and designate up to 100% of the proceeds to benefit the Foundation. Or you can buy items auctioned on behalf of the Foundation. Easiest of all, you'll also be able to make a direct donation!

Let's clean out those closets, garages, and spare rooms for items to sell, sell, sell! By designating the Preeclampsia Foundation as your charity, your item(s) will be posted on the Foundation's eBay page with all other designated items -- then the shopping can begin!

Click this button to learn how to set up your own eBay auction:

It's Easy! Here's How

How to measure your blood pressure the right way

Click on photo for details; used with permission from
the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative
and Jean Miles, MD

For expectant mothers, every prenatal visit to a doctor, nurse, or midwife -- either in one-on-one or group prenatal care -- starts off pretty much the same way. Your vital signs are checked: body temperature, body weight (let's see how that baby is growing!), and blood pressure.

The problem is, blood pressure measurement is one of the most inaccurately performed assessments, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment, according to the Council on Patient Safety in Women's Health Care.

Take charge of your health and overall well-being by understanding the basics of blood pressure, how it's taken, and what you can do before, during, and after pregnancy.

Click this button to learn how to measure your blood pressure the right way:

Blood Pressure Basics

Illustrated Symptoms Tear Pad hot off the presses!

This giant stack of 15,000 newly printed Illustrated Symptoms Tear Pads reflects the demand for an easy-to-understand patient education tool.
To date we've distributed 1.3 million sheets!

Just two years ago, when we set out to partner with health literacy experts to create a patient education tool that describes the warning signs and symptoms of preeclampsia using easy-to-understand illustrations, we knew it would serve an important role for healthcare providers and facilities.

And we were right! Today this Illustrated Symptoms Tear Pad is being adopted by six state initiatives aimed at reducing maternal mortality and morbidity due to preeclampsia and related hypertensive disorders of pregnancy:

California
Florida (coming soon)
Illinois
Oklahoma
Mississippi
New York

These tear pads are available for a low shipping and handling fee, so if you are a care provider, order your supply today!

Place Your Order

Research funding available through EMPOWER

The Foundation's Executive Director Eleni Tsigas congratulated last year's
EMPOWER grant recipient
Shuchita Mundle, MD, of Nagpur, India.

The EMPOWER Program is now accepting research proposals related to preeclampsia and other hypertensive disorders of pregnancy from young investigators in low resource settings. Funding is available up to $60,000 USD for a two-year research project.

Letters of Intent are due November 15, 2015. Thereafter, projects deemed feasible will be invited to submit full applications by April 15, 2016. The grant recipient will be announced in October 2016 at the World Congress of the International Society for the Study of Hypertension in Pregnancy (ISSHP).

EMPOWER (EMpowering Progress in Obstetric and Women's hEalth Research) was established to create partnerships between mentors and single sites within low- and middle-income countries to improve clinical and health services research into hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

EMPOWER is a collaboration of ISSHP, the Preeclampsia Foundation, PRE-EMPT/Global Pregnancy Collaboration, and supporting organization New Zealand Action on Pre-eclampsia.

EMPOWER Guidelines and Applications

NIH invests in technologies to monitor placental health

NIH's Human Placenta Project aims
to revolutionize understanding of a
critical, but poorly understood, organ.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has announced $46 million in research awards for the Human Placenta Project, an initiative to revolutionize understanding of the placenta. The awards will fund technology development and testing to assess placental function throughout pregnancy, with the ultimate goal of improving pregnancy outcomes and lifelong health.

"People usually take the placenta for granted. But when it doesn't work the way it should, it can put the entire pregnancy at risk-along with the health of mother and fetus," said Catherine Spong, MD, deputy director of NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is leading the initiative.

"Many problems of pregnancy, including preeclampsia, can occur because of problems with the placenta," said Eleni Tsigas, Executive Director of the Foundation. "As a participant in NIH's Human Placenta Project, we feel strongly that having a better understanding of the placenta will help improve the health of mothers and children, and are happy to participate in this groundbreaking project."

Read the Full Story

P.S. Thanks for keeping in touch with the Preeclampsia Foundation!

Our patient education and research funding could not happen without you. If you like this content and want to get more out to families like yours, please make a gift at preeclampsia.org/donate.