Congratulations to Dr. Burduli on receiving the NIDA K01 Award!
Congratulations to Dr. Ekaterina Burduli, who, with Dr. Sterling McPherson as her primary mentor, recently received a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) K01 Mentored Research Scientist Award! This award will allow Dr. Burduli to expand her training in the areas of substance use disorder interventions for perinatal women, mobile health interventions and clinical trial design, as well as conduct a clinical trial. Her project, titled “Effective Caregiving for Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Development of an Instructional Mobile Technology Platform for High-Risk Pregnant Women,” will adapt an existing mobile health tool for high-risk, pregnant women and assess its usability, acceptability and feasibility. With this award, Dr. Burduli will gain experience that will allow her to attain her long-term goal of becoming an independent investigator with an established program of research focused on the development, implementation, and testing of interventions for substance-using perinatal women and reduction of poor health outcomes for substance-using perinatal women and their newborns.
Project Narrative
Most newborns experiencing Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) require non-pharmacologic care, which entails, most importantly, maternal involvement with her newborn. To facilitate positive maternal-newborn interactions, mothers need to learn effective caregiving NAS strategies while they are pregnant, yet, an enormous gap exists in the early education of mothers on the symptoms and progression of NAS, in part because no interventions exist to prepare future mothers for the challenges of caring for their newborns at risk for NAS. In this project, I propose to adapt an existing mobile NAS tool for high-risk pregnant women and assess its usability, acceptability, and feasibility in a small randomized controlled analog trial, and engage in career development and training activities that will enhance my expertise in the development, implementation, and testing of interventions for substance using perinatal women.