GAPPS In The Media

Monitoring safety of maternal immunizations in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) presents several unique challenges. GAPPS, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and input from over 70 technical experts and key stakeholders, conducted a landscape analysis of maternal, neonatal and child health surveillance in LMICs, identified key gaps, and outlined a roadmap for program development and implementation of safety monitoring for maternal immunizations in LMICs. This work was recently featured in the January 2018 issue of the Brighton Collaboration’s Vaccine Safety Quarterly Newsletter.

The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and input from a broad array of coauthors and stakeholders, developed a landmark report that summarizes the literature and existing systems for monitoring the safety of maternal immunizations in LMICs. The report includes an analysis of MNCH surveillance in LMICs, identifies gaps, and outlines a roadmap for program development and implementation of safety monitoring for maternal immunizations in LMICs. This landscape analysis was a catalytic process, demonstrating the breadth of efforts in this area and bringing together a range of organizations and stakeholders from industry, academia, regulatory agencies, governmental and nongovernmental organizations, WHO, UNICEF, and the maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) organizations to develop a cohesive strategy.

The Every Preemie – SCALE project has finalized a protocol and tools for a multi-country situation analysis of inpatient care of newborns and young infants in select countries in Africa and Southeast Asia. This multi-country situation analysis will assess service readiness and quality of care by examining health system structures and facility processes for inpatient care of sick newborns and young infants from 0-59 days old.

Some 15 million babies worldwide are born prematurely every year—and nearly 1 million die from related complications. Yet the causes of preterm birth remain a mystery. Sam Mesiano, PhD, is a leading researcher working to unravel the mysteries behind preterm birth. "Dr. Mesiano is conducting exciting and novel research to discover new therapies," said Eve Lackritz, MD, former deputy director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

One new Seattle startup is using a unique strategy to stream on-the-ground video from Rio while also creating a way for locals to earn money. uZoom rolled out its app this month in Rio, where it is letting people use their smartphones to live-stream from a bevy of locations — swimming competitions, late night festivities, beaches, etc. — to give viewers from around the world an alternate method to see what’s going on in Brazil during the Olympic Games. The startup is donating its profits from this month to GAPPS, a global non-profit based in Seattle that focuses on the prevention of prematurity and stillbirth.

My first Mother’s Day was in 2004. I anticipated sleepless nights and lots of happiness around the arrival of my first son, Adam, due in early May. Instead, there were potted plants and sympathy cards and a single white rose in a blue vase after my son was stillborn just before midnight on April 24. Several of us learned of the work of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) and formed the Stillborn, Still Loved guild.

The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth awarded just over $378,000 to help VCU researchers in their search for predictors of preterm birth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Dr. Gregory Buck is leading the study. The team, he said, is looking at the roles of the microbiome, microorganisms and their genetic material in the human body, and its impact on the reproductive tract.

The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth(GAPPS), is announcing three new projects that will use big data to help discover the root causes of preterm birth and identify potential targets for interventions to improve pregnancy health. In this case, big data is defined as large and complex data sets generated from biological components like molecules and cells, which require computational and mathematical modeling to interpret.

Worldwide, momentum is building to dramatically reduce newborn deaths, as catalyzed by the Born Too Soon and The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirths (GAPPS) reports and the Every Newborn Action Plan. These and other initiatives, including Every Preemie - SCALE, the Healthy Newborn Network, Survive and Thrive, USAID's Maternal and Child Survival Program, and the forthcoming Public-Private Partnership to Prevent Preterm Birth, are aligning efforts to save lives across the globe using evidence-driven strategies and proven interventions.

While the Gates Foundation is clearly the primary driver of the region’s worldwide leadership in global health, and perhaps in helping create many of the biomedical bridges between China and Northwest, Cohen said it’s important to recognize all of the other organizations making similar collaborative inroads – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center working with Chinese scientists on the infectious disease connection to cancer, Spash.org’s work on access to water, studies of child respiratory illness by the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth, the Infectious Disease Research Institute exploring how to improve vaccines, and so on.

Premature births are much more common than you'd think. "Worldwide, 15 million babies are born preterm every year, including about 1 in every 9 babies in the United States," says Dr. Craig Rubens, former executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth. This large number includes some non-spontaneous births, such as those induced due to maternal pre-eclampsia or hemorrhage, but about two-thirds are spontaneous, with the mother going into labor without medical intervention.

In 2012 a team of international organizations, academic institutions, and United Nations agencies released Born Too Soon, a landmark publication calling for increased action to prevent preterm birth, better manage pregnancies, and improve care for preterm babies. PCI, in partnership with the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) and the American College of Nurse Midwives (ACNM) is answering the call to action through its USAID-funded Every Preemie--SCALE project.

"We're recognizing that the last few weeks matter," explains Michael Gravett, M.D., scientific advisor of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth. "Babies born at 39 weeks have fewer immediate problems versus those born at 37 and 38 weeks. And down the road, they do better on tests of intelligence and gross motor skills."

U.S. doctors can offer pregnant women little help in assessing their risk for stillbirth and even less help in preventing it. “It is one of our most under-attended health issues,” says Seattle pediatrician Craig E. Rubens, former executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth. "And yet nationally, we have 25,000 stillbirths each year. Despite modern obstetric technology and screening for infections, we still lose babies in the womb. And our general knowledge of why this happens remains poor. We really need more science and research to understand what leads to stillbirth."

A still little-known global problem just garnered a dubious honor. Preterm birth, babies born too early, is now the leading killer of children around the world. We may now know what kills the most children, but doctors are largely unable to predict whether or not a pregnant mother will give birth too early. “If you stood 100 women up in a room and asked me to pick who would have a preterm episode, I couldn’t tell you,” said Dr. Craig Rubens, former executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS).

Complications from preterm births now outrank all other causes of death for young children. Some $250 million worth of intensive research is getting underway through four major initiatives: the Global Coalition to Advance Preterm Birth Research; the March of Dimes; the University of California at San Francisco’s Preterm Birth Initiative; and the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

GAPPS former Deputy Director Dr. Eve Lackritz blogs about her trip to Bangladesh to help set up a new research site as part of the Preventing Preterm Birth initiative: "We have come to help support the work of icddr,b to address the next frontier – the one area of child survival that has seen the most limited gains: the relentless burden of death of newborns. We arrive to help support the development of research studies of pregnant women, to establish ways to monitor women throughout their pregnancies, and start to unravel the complex and elusive systems that regulate pregnancy and cause preterm birth."

Preterm birth is now the leading cause of death for children under 5 worldwide, and a new scientific paper reveals a startling lack of knowledge about what causes it and how to prevent it. "There are not enough resources dedicated to researching the complex problem of preterm birth and its prevention," said lead author Craig Rubens, MD, PhD, former executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS).

Improving Clinical Management of Stillbirth is an educational session sponsored by the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) and the University of Washington. The program was created to give residents a better perspective of what parents go through during a traumatizing medical event.

New mothers are not supposed to leave the hospital with empty arms. To arrive in labor and depart in mourning is to upend the way the world is supposed to be. "Born In Silence" is the title of the illuminating video by the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth, which Upworthy is featuring today. Stillbirth visits an American family once every 21 minutes, GAPPS reports, and this video tells a handful of those stories.

Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf is a practicing Obstetrician and Associate Professor at the University of Washington. She's part of a team that wants to design an easy way to identify women at risk for having a preterm birth. Dr. Waldorf and her team are being given a $1.4 million grant by GAPPS, the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth.

Nearly 9,000 babies are born preterm in Washington state, says Dr. Craig Rubens, cofounder and executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS). Rubens encourages expectant mothers to ask questions and talk to their doctor about their potential risk factors — which can include smoking, stress and a previous preterm birth.

GAPPS created the video "Born in Silence" with Amanda and Brent Spraker and other parents of stillborn children to draw more attention to the issue; support grieving parents and encourage research that could prevent future stillbirths.

“This is not just happening in the developing world,” says Dr. Craig Rubens, executive director of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) and a study author. “It’s also a huge problem in the developed world. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of prematurity in the world. Getting people and funders and policymakers to understand that is a huge burden.”

A strategic alliance, including researchers, funders, and key stakeholders in the fields of pregnancy, childbirth, and early life, will help alleviate the lack of consensus among researchers about how to prevent the adverse outcomes of pregnancy, according to research published in the November issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.  

In the Puget Sound region, the nonprofit global health and development sector is irrevocably intertwined with the biotechnology and medical device industry. At the WBBA conference, attendees had the opportunity to hear from the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), an effort that has a specific Global Action Agenda focused on serving people in the developing world.

Dr. Craig Rubens, head of the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS), discusses the increasing rates of premature birth and long-term health effects. Tiny Footprints Guild member and mother of premature twins, Jennifer Sinconis, shares about her personal experience.

A new report released Wednesday finds that 15 million babies worldwide are born prematurely each year. Implementing every known method of preventing preterm birth would only prevent 8% of these early deliveries, according to Craig Rubens, executive director of GAPPS.

This week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a new Grand Challenges in Global Health program – Preventing Preterm Birth. The Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS) was awarded a $20 million grant to lead a global effort to increase the chances of healthy pregnancies and births.