Dr. Kathryn Malin gets NIH grant to study social determinants of health and stress in preterm infants and mothers

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Dr. Kathryn Malin gets NIH grant to study social determinants of health and stress in preterm infants and mothers

Grant will go toward studying relationship between health of mothers, NICU toxic stress and epigenetic alterations

Dr. Kathryn Malin, assistant professor in the College of Nursing, has been awarded a K23 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study the cumulative impact of maternal social determinants of health and early life toxic stress in the neonatal intensive care unit on epigenetic alterations in preterm infants and their mothers.

"I'm pleased to have received this grant and look forward to the impact this funding will have on our understanding of epigenetic alterations in mothers and preterm infants," Malin says, "I'd like to thank my colleagues for their support, particularly my mentor Dr. Rosemary White-Traut and colleagues in Marquette's College of Nursing, all of whose help was invaluable."

Malin's project is entitled "Premature Infants, Moms, and the Social Determinants of Health: an Epigenetic Investigation." It will examine the relationships among the social determinants of heath of mothers, NICU toxic stress and epigenetic alterations in both preterm infants and their mothers. The grant amount is $447,300 over three years.

Malin's broader program of research is focused on infant and parental stress in the neonatal intensive care unit. Malin aims to develop a framework that accounts for the toxic stress associated with the NICU environment in the context of the social determinants of health of families that require NICU care. Malin will incorporate the reciprocal influences of both members of the preterm infant-maternal dyad while also linking toxic stress to epigenetic alterations.

The K23 award is meant to provide researchers with a clinical, doctoral degree with an intensive, supervised, patient-oriented research experience.

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