Ethics of Conducting Research with Pregnant Participants
This panel brings together researchers and experts to address the following:
Panelists
Dr. Anne Drapkin Lyerly (Professor of Social Medicine and Research Professor OBGYN, School of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill)
Dr. Lyerly's research addresses socially and morally complex issues in women’s health and reproductive medicine, with a focus on how people assign meaning to reproductive events. A central goal of her work is to inform and reframe debates based on the views of those most profoundly affected by them, and to appropriately weight these individuals’ interests in shaping reproductive health care.
After finishing medical school and residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Duke, she completed the Greenwall Fellowship in Bioethics and Health Policy at Georgetown and Johns Hopkins Universities, and spent ten years on the faculty at Duke before joining UNC’s Department of Social Medicine and its Center for Bioethics as its first Associate Director. Dr. Lyerly co-founded the Obstetrics and Gynecology Risk Research Group, which brought together experts from medical epidemiology, anthropology, obstetrics and gynecology, philosophy, bioethics, gender theory and medical humanities for research on how risk is assessed and managed in the context of pregnancy. She is a founder of the Second Wave Initiative, an effort to ensure that the health interests of pregnant people are fairly represented in biomedical research and drug and device policies
Dr. Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson (Associate Professor College of Public Health, Division of Epidemiology, OSU)
Shawnita Sealy-Jefferson is Associate Professor in Epidemiology in the College of Public Health at OSU. Dr. Sealy-Jefferson is a scholar-activist and social epidemiologist whose primary research seeks action to combat manifestations of structural racism that limit the human rights of Black families and communities. She is Founder, Director, and Principal Investigator of the Social Epidemiology to Eliminate Disparities (SEED) Lab. The mission of the SEED Lab is to conduct high quality epidemiologic research to find solutions to the disproportionate burden of infant mortality among Black women. Dr. Sealy-Jefferson draws from the Reproductive Justice Framework to empirically document the health impact of systems of structural oppression. Dr. Sealy-Jefferson is also the Principal Investigator of the SECURE Study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Dr. Maged Constantine (Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Maternal Fetal Medicine, Wexner Medical Center)
Maged Costantine, MD, joined The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in July to serve as the director of the Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Costantine is a highly respected clinical investigator, having written more than 100 published scholarly articles and book chapters. His primary research interests are hypertensive disorders of pregnancy as well as perinatal pharmacology.
Most recently from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Costantine conducted years-long studies evaluating the efficacy of pravastatin in preventing preeclampsia in pregnant women. While pravastatin has been contraindicated in pregnancy, there is no evidence to support any increased risk of congenital anomalies or other pregnancy complications. Costantine evaluated the existing research and hypothesized that the benefits would greatly outweigh the risks. Women who had preeclampsia in pregnancy are at much higher risk of lifetime hypertension problems and heart disease, and the child is at higher risk for obesity, hypertension and other long-term health and neurodevelopmental problems.
About CARE
CARE events promote multidisciplinary and exploratory discussion of cutting-edge issues in the field of research ethics. In doing so, CARE aims to advance Ohio State’s shared values and build a community around the topic of research integrity.
