Our Journey Towards Reproductive Justice: Initial Findings from the SOLARS Study

The Supporting Our Ladies and Reducing Stress to Prevent Preterm Birth (SOLARS) study, is led by, in partnership with, and for women of color. Grounded in Reproductive Justice, SOLARS is funded by the UCSF California Preterm Birth Initiative (PTBi-CA) and looks at how stress, resilience and coping affect gestational duration and preterm birth in Black and Latinx women in Oakland and San Francisco, California. This phase of the SOLARS Study was launched in February 2019 and is ending prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic and budget cuts. We were able to enroll 77 Black and Latinx women and follow them across their pregnancies and postpartum periods. We will be sharing preliminary findings about exposures to racism and other stressors, coping and resilience, and birthing experiences and outcomes.

Objectives: 

• Share effective recruitment and retention strategies to engage Black and Latinx women in biospecimen research studies. 
• Describe the different types of stress exposures and coping strategies used across the lifetime and during pregnancy among Black and Latinx women.  
• Communicate how data use guidelines can be used to give communities the power to determine how research data can answer questions that are important to them. 

This event is sponsored by the UCSF CA Preterm Birth Initiative.