As COVID-19 vaccines began to roll-out following Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA in December 2020, our MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies program and our Mommy’s Milk program rapidly opened studies to evaluate the use of these vaccines during pregnancy and lactation.
The Center launches an Employee Excellence Award program to recognize exceptional staff.
Dr. Chambers is selected by the UC San Diego Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women to be UCSD’s nominee for the YWCA’s Tribute to Women & Industry Awards (TWIN). The TWIN award recognizes women in a managerial, executive, or leadership roles for their extraordinary achievements.
Our Mommy’s Milk program also quickly established a study to collect breast milk from lactating mothers who had contracted COVID-19 infection. This study was among the first to find that breast milk did not contain viral DNA from COVID-19, and thus was unlikely to transmit COVID-19 infection to a breastfed infant.
Within days of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S., our MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies program opened recruitment to pregnant people who were infected with or exposed to COVID-19 infection.
In March 2020, our work as we knew it changed with the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like the rest of the world, we rapidly adapted and evolved to shift to remote work arrangements and halt any non-essential face-to-face interactions with the public, such as our community and healthcare provider outreach activities.
Dr. Miguel del Campo is named Genetics section chief at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego.
Our Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee is established with the goal of leading efforts to build a more representative, equitable, and inclusive Center in order to strengthen the quality, relevance, and impact of our research, programs, and services.
The Center is one of 27 sites across the U.S. to receive funding for the planning phase of the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study. Led locally by Dr. Chambers, the planning phase of the study was intended investigators at the study sites to design recruitment strategies and data collection protocols for a future, large-scale study to evaluate fetal and child neurodevelopment from pregnancy through 9 years of age.
Dr. Chambers is appointed as a member of the Core Scientific/Strategic Advisory Board for the ConcePTION Project, an international consortium established to reduce uncertainty about the effects of medication used during pregnancy and breastfeeding through research and dissemination of evidence-based information to women and their healthcare providers.
