Night shift work among pregnant healthcare workers - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Isha Agarwal, MD ScD is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at MaineHealth, with a dual appointment at Tufts University School of Medicine (MaineHealth’s academic affiliate). She seeks a Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award to develop fundamental scientific knowledge and skills in key areas that will prepare her to launch an independent research career focused on understanding the role of night shift work, and more generally sleep, on women’s perinatal and long-term cardiometabolic health. Dr. Agarwal’s proposed five-year training, career development, and research plan builds upon her outstanding academic background, including doctoral thesis work in cardiovascular epidemiology, more recent work on the cardiometabolic impacts of night shift work and other occupational exposures, and clinical experience as an emergency physician who works night shifts. Dr. Agarwal has identified key focus areas in which she requires additional in-depth training including perinatal/reproductive epidemiology, sleep, and circadian disruption, qualitative research, and translating scientific evidence to practical change in occupational health. Her training goals are highly-integrated with her proposed research plan, which aims to: 1) identify key social-economic predictors of night shift work during pregnancy, 2) determine the impact of night shift work pre-pregnancy and during pregnancy on cardiometabolic adverse pregnancy outcomes independent of social-economic factors, and 3) characterize the barriers and facilitators of requesting and granting night shift work accommodations among pregnant night shift workers and their employers. Dr. Agarwal proposes a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach, leveraging detailed data on shift work and pregnancy outcomes from a large, occupational cohort of US nurses (Nurses’ Health Study II), and supplementing this with a new qualitative evaluation of pregnant healthcare workers and their employers at three US hospitals. Dr. Agarwal’s mentors, Dr. Abby Fleisch (perinatal epidemiology), Dr. Deirdre Tobias (cardiometabolic disease epidemiology), and Dr. Charles Reynolds (sleep and circadian disruption), have related and complementary expertise relevant to Dr. Agarwal’s training goals and research aims, and prior experience mentoring K-awardees. Dr. Agarwal’s unique dual affiliation with both MaineHealth and Tufts will enable her to benefit from the exceptional scientific environment and robust institutional support provided by both institutions, and will facilitate her interactions with her proposed team of mentors and advisors in Maine and Boston. Dr. Agarwal will emerge from the K23 period with critical knowledge and skills to launch an independent research career focused on understanding the role of night shift work, and more generally sleep, on women’s perinatal and long-term cardiometabolic health.
