freestocksOn November 19, 2024, Padma Kaul and colleagues launched the Healthy Pregnancy Hub website. This resource presents Canadian data on prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) medications used during pregnancy in multimedia formats, in order educate patients and clinicians about the effects of these medications during pregnancy.
The research behind the hub was led by Kaul, a professor in the University of Alberta‘s faculty of medicine and dentistry. According to Kaul, “three out of four pregnant women take a prescription medication during pregnancy, knowingly or unknowingly, due to a pre-existing condition or a complication.”
During pregnancy, antacids, antidepressants, and antihistamines are used to treat prenatal depression, allergies, and heartburn. Despite widespread medication use, that safety data for this population remains limited, Kaul said.
Pregnant women are rarely included in clinical trials, she explained. This gap makes it difficult for health-care providers and patients to make informed decisions about medication use during pregnancy.
Information on medications and pregnancy often “not accessible to individuals who directly benefit from it,” Kaul says
Kaul and her research team helped establish the Canadian Mother-Child Cohort (CAMCO), a research infrastructure supported by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The infrastructure combines data from five provinces, tracking prescription medication use among expectant mothers who gave birth between 2005 and 2023.
Their comprehensive dataset has tracked intra-provincial deliveries and patient information since 2005, encompassing “approximately 500,000 women and 900,000 babies,” Kaul said. “In the absence of clinical data, large-scale observational studies are the next best option,” she explained.
The goal with CAMCO was to “create a learning program that would train the next generation of perinatal researchers and advance field knowledge.” Later, the team obtained additional funding to develop knowledge transition tools for their research.
“The Healthy Pregnancy Hub [is a] culmination of these efforts. It serves as a platform where pregnant women can access medication information and have more informed conversations with their health-care providers. Moreover, it presents synthesized evidence about pregnancy-related conditions, including gestational diabetes, in an accessible format,” Kaul explained.
Kaul said the Healthy Pregnancy Hub was developed with patients at its core. About 2,000 patient partners participated in its creation. According to Kaul, their feedback confirmed a significant information gap amongst pregnant patients.
“Despite the available knowledge on medication use during pregnancy, it is not accessible to individuals who directly benefit from it,” she said.
The qualitative feedback from pregnant patients guided researchers in creating the hub with materials that are clear and accessible rather than resources using medical jargon. Kaul emphasized that including patient partners in research is essential as it “enables researchers to fulfill their goal of improving care and outcomes by directly addressing patients’ needs.”
Kaul’s team to expand focus and collect data for additional OTC medications
The hub is part of a broader effort to “examine the health care system’s performance for pregnant patients in terms of equitable access to care,” Kaul explained. She said that “Alberta’s efforts in this respect are commendable, having among the highest gestational diabetes screening rates.”
According to Kaul, the Healthy Pregnancy Hub and CAMCO infrastructure represent a step forward in making medical knowledge accessible to both patients and researchers. The CAMCO database has enabled Kaul’s team to study medication use during pregnancy, including vital research on anti-seizure medications and COVID-19’s impact on pregnancy.
Building on their work with prescription medications, the research team is now expanding their focus. They are launching a new study to collect data directly from patient partners about OTC medication use beyond non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin or Tylenol. The goal of this is to address the absence of data in the CAMCO database and improve pregnancy-related care.
