Publications by authors named "Lasha Clarke"
Article Synopsis
- - Racial and ethnic disparities in maternal mortality rates in the U.S. highlight the urgent need for improved maternity care quality and safety for all women, particularly in the southeastern region.
- - This project aims to test the effectiveness of pre-conception counseling with father involvement in community settings, focusing on enhancing cardiovascular health outcomes before and during pregnancy.
- - The study involves assessing community needs, conducting a pilot program, and evaluating the implementation of counseling to identify and address barriers, with the goal of creating sustainable public health strategies to reduce maternal health issues.
Article Synopsis
- - Pregnant Black women experience a higher risk of adverse birth outcomes due to factors like increased stress, which can lead to depression and preterm birth, with the study focusing on gendered racial stress as a unique contributor.
- - The study involved 428 Black women and measured various stress factors, including gendered racial stress, perceived stress, and stressful life events, all against the backdrop of depressive symptoms using established scales.
- - Findings indicated that gendered racial stress significantly correlates with prenatal depression, with a specific emphasis on the burden subscale, while sociodemographic factors did not show significant associations in the models analyzed.
Refugee women face numerous and unique barriers to sexual and reproductive healthcare and can experience worse pregnancy-related outcomes compared with U.S.-born and other immigrant women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTemporal Trends in Dietary Sodium Intake Among Adults Aged ≥19 Years - United States, 2003-2016.
MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep
October 2021
Hypertension, which can be brought on by excess sodium intake, affects nearly one half of U.S. adults and is a major risk factor for heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States (1).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The purpose of this study is to explore Protestant religious leaders' attitudes towards abortion and their strategies for pastoral care in Georgia, USA. Religious leaders may play an important role in providing sexual and reproductive health pastoral care given a long history of supporting healing and health promotion.
Methods: We conducted 20 in-depth interviews with Mainline and Black Protestant religious leaders on their attitudes toward abortion and how they provide pastoral care for abortion.
Problem: Disruption in homeostatic feedback loops between inflammatory mediators and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a key mechanism linking chronic stress to inflammation and adverse health outcomes, including those occurring during pregnancy. In particular, alterations in glucocorticoid sensitivity may occur as a result of chronic stress, including that due to racial discrimination, and may be implicated in the persistent adverse maternal and infant health outcomes experienced by African Americans. While there are a few large-scale studies in human pregnancy that measure both cytokines and HPA axis hormones, to our knowledge, none directly measure glucocorticoid sensitivity at the cellular level, especially in an African American population.
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