The Healthy Mom Zone Study

Control Systems Engineering for Optimizing a Prenatal Weight Gain Intervention (The Healthy Mom Zone Study)

• National Institute of Health
• PI: Dr. Danielle Downs, Kinesiology
• CO-I: Dr. Jennifer Savage Williams

Conventional approaches to manage gestational weight gain (GWG) in overweight/ obese pregnant women (OW/OBPW) have been generally ineffective despite the critical need to control GWG for positive maternal/infant health outcomes. This research project uses dynamical modeling and control systems engineering to develop an individually-tailored (adaptive) behavioral intervention for managing GWG among overweight and obese pregnant women.

The insight gained from this research as well as independent developments in e-health tools and their use in clinical practice (e.g., link to electronic records/provider communication) will help disseminate this adaptive, optimized intervention to effectively manage GWG in all pregnant women to ultimately improve maternal/infant health and impact the etiology of obesity at a critical time in the life cycle.

In the Press: Intervention program targets gestational weight gain

Referenced below are several papers published from the "GWG" Study:

• Savage JS, Hohman EE, McNitt KM, Pauley AM, Leonard KS, Turner T, Pauli JM, Gernand AD, Rivera DE, Symons Downs D. Uncontrolled eating during pregnancy predicts fetal growth: The Healthy Mom Zone Trial. Nutrients. (2019).
• Guo P, Rivera DE, Savage JS, Hohman EE, Pauley AM, Leonard KS, Symons Downs D. System Identification Approaches for Energy Intake Estimation: Enhancing Interventions for Managing Gestational Weight Gain. IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology. (2018).
• Freigoun M, Rivera DE, Gernand AD, Pauli J, Guo P, Hohman EE, Pauley AM, Leonard KS, Symons Downs D, Savage JS. A Dynamical Systems Model of Intrauterine Fetal Growth.  Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems. (2018).
• Pauley AM, Hohman EE, Savage JS, Rivera DE, Guo P, Leonard KS, Symons Downs D. Gestational Weight Gain Intervention impacts determinants of healthy eating and exercise in overweight/obese pregnant women. Journal of Obesity. ( 2018)
• Symons Downs D., Savage JS, Rivera DE, Collins, LM, Smyth J, Rolls B, Hohman EE, McNitt K, Kunselman A, Stetter C, Pauley AM, Leonard KS, Guo P. Individually-Tailored, Adaptive Intervention to manage gestational weight gain: Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial in Overweight and Obese Women. JMIR Research Protocols. (2018).
• Symons Downs D, Rauff EL, Savage JS.  Falling Short of Guidelines? Nutrition and Weight Gain Knowledge in Pregnancy. Journal of Women’s Health Care (2014).
• Savage JS, Symons Downs D, Dong Y, Rivera DE, Collins LC. Control systems engineering for optimizing a prenatal weight gain intervention to regulate infant birth weight. American Journal of Public Health (2014).