FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, June 11, 2026
Contact:
Jillian McKoy, jpmckoy@bu.edu
Michael Saunders, msaunder@bu.edu
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Boston University School of Public Health Professor Receives $3.2M NIH Grant to Study Pregnancy-related Hypertension
Samantha Parker Kelleher, along with researchers at BU School of Public Health and Boston Medical Center, will examine the role of high blood pressure during the postpartum period on the risk of developing recurrent hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, such as preeclampsia and gestational hypertension.
Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP), which include conditions such as preeclampsia and chronic and gestational hypertension, affect up to 10 percent of pregnancies in the United States. These disorders are strongly associated with cardiovascular disease and are often recurrent, putting mothers in the US who have more than one child—at least 70 percent —at an even greater risk of heart disease, chronic hypertension, stroke, and other poor health outcomes.
Up to half of women who experience HDP also develop hypertension during postpartum, which is the first six weeks following a birth, making the postpartum period a unique and underutilized window of time to assess both risk factors and solutions for recurrent HDP.
As HDP cases continue to rise, Dr. Samantha Parker Kelleher , associate professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), has received a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to examine the effects of postpartum hypertension on recurrent HDP and identify ways to decrease HDP rates among mothers, which range from 15-45 percent in the US. Dr. Parker Kelleher will lead the project alongside Dr. Christina Yarrington, a maternal fetal medicine specialist and multiple principal investigator of the study.
Currently, the only evidence-based preventive treatment for recurrent HDP is low-dose aspirin , which needs to be prescribed early in the subsequent pregnancy to be effective. This new project presents an opportunity to move beyond the traditional efforts within maternal healthcare to implement prevention strategies prior to the next pregnancy.
“We know that early prenatal care does improve maternal health outcomes, but many mothers may be at a disadvantage for those early interventions if they experience barriers to care, or don’t realize they’re pregnant until later,” says Dr. Parker Kelleher, principal investigator of the project. “With this study, we’re trying to shift interventions to an even earlier stage—before subsequent pregnancies—to get mothers into a good position to have healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies.”
For the project, Dr. Parker Kelleher and researchers from BUSPH and BMC will utilize health data among approximately 3,500 BMC patients from 2016-2025 to quantify the role of postpartum hypertension on recurrent HDP and better understand the health factors that contribute to recurrent HDP. They’ll focus on patients who have had at least two children and experienced HDP.
The team will also draw upon data these patients acquired as participants in BMC’s home blood pressure monitoring program, an innovative program that launched in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospital has continued the program, in which patients receive a cloud-connected blood pressure cuff that captures their blood pressure readings and transfers the data to a web portal using cellular-enabled technology.
“Post-pandemic, many barriers that prevent patients from accessing regular prenatal and postpartum care remain, as does the risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy,” says study investigator Dr. Erica Holland , an obstetrician-gynecologist at BMC and assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at BU’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. “Our blood pressure monitoring program enables clinicians to assess and manage elevated blood pressure remotely, and to facilitate urgent in-person evaluation. This timely treatment aims at preventing readmission, as well as the life-altering complications of preeclampsia, such as seizure and stroke.”
As the largest essential hospital in New England that serves diverse and primarily underserved populations, BMC is an ideal home for this innovation, she says. “Black and Hispanic pregnant people are disproportionately affected by hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and about 30 percent of BMC patients experience these disorders before or during pregnancy.”
One broad goal of the project is to help inform guidelines on when antihypertensive medications should be prescribed to patients postpartum. Hypertension is currently defined as two or more blood pressure measures of at least 140/90 mmHg, but when the blood pressure monitoring program began, that threshold was 150/100 mmHg. The data from the monitoring program will enable the researchers to assess the effects of the program on patients’ blood pressure levels before and after the program was offered, as well as examine the health impacts of lowering the threshold for which medication should be prescribed.
The team will also utilize electronic health records to examine the effect of breastfeeding and breastfeeding duration on recurrent HDP among patients with and without hypertension during their first pregnancy, and explore the actions mothers can take—such as weight change and primary care engagement—to potentially mitigate the recurrence of HDP in a future pregnancy.
“Breastfeeding has been shown to improve multiple maternal health outcomes, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease later in life, but also in the immediate postpartum period,” says study investigator Dr. Katherine Standish , family medicine physician, founder and codirector of BMC’s Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine Center , and assistant professor of family medicine at the Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. “As soon as one month after initiating breastfeeding, improved cardiovascular indicators have been seen, though like many breastfeeding-related outcomes, risk reduction is greater the longer the length of time one breastfeeds.”
There are many barriers to breastfeeding, she notes, but women with acute hypertensive diseases around the time of delivery are often both sick and in need of significant medical care, which can make it difficult to begin breastfeeding. “By learning more about how breastfeeding might reduce the risk of future hypertensive diseases, our study can help us identify mothers who would most benefit from breastfeeding, and the optimal timing to help mothers breastfeed, both for their own and for their baby’s health,” Dr. Standish says.
Additional researchers involved in this study are Dr. Sarah Gordon, associate professor of health law, policy & management at BUSPH; and Dr. Kerrie Nelson, research professor in biostatistics at BUSPH.
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About Boston University School of Public Health
Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.