Professor Receives Rising Star Award from Pediatric and Perinatal Organization.

Samantha Parker Kelleher (SPH’14), assistant professor of epidemiology, has received the 2020 Rising Star Award from the Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiologic Research (SPER).

The award recognizes early-to-mid-career researchers from academia, government, and the private sector “whose achievements and potential set them on a trajectory to become research leaders in the field of reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology.”

An alum of SPH’s PhD program, Kelleher conducts research with a focus on understanding the relationship between prenatal exposures and infant and childhood outcomes, and the role of adverse pregnancy outcomes in maternal health. She is the principle investigator of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-funded study that examines the impact of adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth on the development of coronary heart disease, using data from the Black Women’s Health Study. The grant is part of a Career Development Award that she received in 2016 from the National Institutes of Health, which also included a training plan for Kelleher to learn more about cardiovascular epidemiology and the racial disparities that exist in heart disease.

Currently, Kelleher is devoting much of her energy to a pilot project that examines postpartum health, particularly hypertension, among women delivering at Boston Medical Center.

“The project aims to provide a descriptive epidemiology account of what postpartum hypertension looks like in this population, including how frequently it occurs, how women are being treated, what the short-term consequences are,” says Kelleher, who is collaborating with Christina Yarrington, an assistant professor of obstetrics and medicine at the School of Medicine, on the study.

She says her growing interest in postpartum health is in part fueled by the “chasm in care” that new mothers experience.

“After they have a baby and are discharged from the hospital, women go home and no longer think about themselves,” says Kelleher. “They’re completely saddled with childcare, maintaining their home, and perhaps going back to work, and they don’t have time for themselves.” This can lead to a delay in seeking care for postpartum health issues until it becomes an emergency, she says.

At SPH, Kelleher teaches Applications of Intermediate Epidemiology (EP850), during which students complete a data analysis project using SAS and learn how to present and interpret data on a specific health issue. She has been a member of SPER since 2011, and also serves as an editor and contributor to the journal Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.

“I love my job,” says Kelleher. “I love collaborating with colleagues who want to solve real-world, timely health problems, I love learning about conditions that I haven’t studied before, and the reasons why they’re happening, and I love interacting with students.”

—Jillian McKoy