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Your Gift Will Provide Better Beginnings For All Babies

Birth defects affect 1 in 33 babies. Hospitalization for birth defects costs the United States over $2.6 billion annually, and this doesn’t even begin to factor in the emotional and financial costs of living with a birth defect.

Donate. You can help us make a difference.

The Center for Better Beginnings is a division of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California San Diego and is dedicated to advancing the identification, prevention, and treatment of birth defects through cutting-edge research, top-notch clinical care, and community and professional educational programs.

Your donation to our Center will allow us to:

  • Provide free, up-to-date information to people who are pregnant and/or chestfeeding and their healthcare providers about exposures that could be a risk to either a person or their developing baby.
  • Provide care and support to families affected by and struggling with birth defects.
  • Fund much-needed research to determine which medications, chemicals and other exposures are safe and which could be harmful during pregnancy or chestfeeding.
  • Better understand the powerful benefits of human milk and how it influences child health and development.
  • Educate the community about a wide variety of topics related to the causes of birth defects and how they can be prevented and treated.
  • Train the next generation of physicians and scientists who will dedicate their careers to eliminating birth defects.

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Community Awareness & Advocacy

Community Awareness & Advocacy

Promoting Alcohol-Free Pregnancies

On September 9, 2016, we hosted the 1st annual Nine Months Matter: Walkfest for Healthy, Alcohol-Free Pregnancy in partnership with the Rady Children’s Hospital Auxiliary and SoCal NOFAS. This free community event will be held every year in September to increase our community’s awareness of how devastating prenatal alcohol exposure is for a developing baby, and to advocate for alcohol-free pregnancies. Learn more about our inaugural 2016 event and get the early scoop on 2017!

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Information & Counseling Services

Information & Counseling Services

Information You Can Trust When Decisions Matter Most

The Center for Better Beginnings’ public health information service, MotherToBaby California, provides free risk assessment and up-to-date, evidence-based information to pregnant and breastfeeding women and their health care providers regarding the effects of medications, recreational substances, chemicals, and many other environmental agents. Our expert information specialists can be reached directly by phone, email or live-chat. MotherToBaby California is an affiliate of the non-profit Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS).

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Researchers Develop Potential Blood Test for FASD

Working with colleagues at the Texas A&M College of Medicine and the Omni-Net Birth Defects Prevention Program in Ukraine, our experts identified a blood test that may help predict how severely a baby will be affected by alcohol exposure during pregnancy. Published in the journal PLOS ONE, the findings could facilitate early intervention to improve the health of infants and children who were prenatally exposed to alcohol.

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Information and Counseling

Community Outreach & Empowerment

Prenatal and Breastfeeding Information Services

Giving children the best chance at a healthy start in life is an important public health goal. We are helping our community make informed health decisions by providing free risk assessments and up-to-date, evidence-based information on exposures during pregnancy and while breastfeeding via our MotherToBaby California program. This program is available to those residing in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and the US territories of American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Island.

Learn about this important and free public health information service.

Publications & Funding

Publications and Funding

Advancements in Science, Improvements in Health

The Center for Better Beginnings’ active research program is supported by funding from numerous sources, including state, federal, private, and industry. Our scholars have a strong publication history, contributing to the fields of obstetric, pediatric and reproductive health, genetics, teratology and epidemiology by publishing in scientific peer-reviewed journals.

Many of our scientific findings have revolutionized our understanding of the genetic and environmental underpinnings of abnormal fetal development. From our groundbreaking research examining alcohol in pregnancy, to creating the first-ever repository for human milk research, we are leading the pack. Read more about our publications and funding, and identify where you can fit in to our discoveries.

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Research

Our Research Portfolio

Fueling Discovery and Innovation

We are making real-world contributions to maternal and infant health in a variety of areas. Whether we’re evaluating the safety of a medication or vaccine in pregnancy, determining the amount of THC present in the breast milk of moms who use cannabis, developing a program to reduce risky alcohol consumption in Native American women of childbearing age, or monitoring cases of gastroschisis in California, one thing is certain: we won’t stop researching until we have the answers that moms and babies deserve. Find out more about our current research portfolio, and how we are advancing maternal and infant health.

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Professional Training

Pre- and Post-Doctoral Fellowships

Investing in Tomorrow’s Scientists

The Center for Better Beginnings is committed to delivering an educational experience that develops students and junior professionals who are rigorously trained in research methodology, skilled at solving problems, focused on innovating, and passionate about maternal health and infant development. Within the framework and support of the UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, our pre- and post-doctoral scholars receive unparalleled training that is hands-on, data driven, and focused. We offer numerous opportunities for our scholars to succeed in our academic and professional training program. Ready to make your mark on maternal and infant health under the mentorship of a world-class expert?

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Clinical & Research Fellowship Professors

Clinical & Research Fellowship Professors

Shaping Pediatric and Prenatal Health

Dr. Chambers holds joint appointments in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine. She gives didactic lectures at the UCSD School of Medicine, is a group leader for Epidemiology for Medical Students at UCSD School of Medicine, an instructor at Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences where she gives an eight-week elective on Teratology, and lectures in the UCSD undergraduate program for Environmental and Preventive Health Issues. She is actively involved in teaching and mentorship of students enrolled the Public Health Joint Doctoral Program from UCSD and San Diego State University. She also mentors graduate students from the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences for six-week elective rotations, and mentors Human Development course undergraduate students with an independent research project for 10-week internships. Postdoctoral scholars also find a home at the Center for Better Beginnings under the mentorship of Dr. Chambers. In recognition of her commitment to training the next generation of scholars, in 2016 Dr. Chambers received the Patricia Rodier Mid-Career Award for Research and Mentoring from the Teratology Society.

Dr. Jones is the Independent Study Projects liaison for the Department of Pediatrics. He conducts resident rounds for neonatal fellows, residents and medical students in the UCSD neonatal intensive care unit and newborn nursery. He gives didactic lectures at the UCSD School of Medicine. At virtually all times, he has a pediatric resident from UCSD or the Balboa Naval Hospital rotating on service as part of the Dysmorphology/Genetics elective. Fourth-year medical students may also rotate on this service on a case-by-case basis.

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Telemedicine

Telemedicine & FASD

Digital Communication Has No Boundaries

Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications (mobile phones, laptop computers, tablets) to provide clinical health care. The Center’s telemedicine program is a medical endeavor in partnership with and funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) in order to provide expertise in Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD), which is often difficult to diagnose, to a much broader population.

The FASD telemedicine program that we are developing would allow the opportunity for a practitioner in a remote location to perform a comprehensive examination of a child being evaluated for FASD that could be simultaneously viewed, commented upon and corrected by an FASD expert at a central location. This provides an innovative approach to the diagnosis of FASD in underserved areas throughout the world where physicians with expertise in diagnosis of this disorder are unavailable. This provides the opportunity for a patient in any location to get a specialized and comprehensive examination for FASD.

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