Schools
UMass Chan Receives State Funding For Pregnancy Care, Cancer Research
The medical school in Worcester has recieved state funding to address gaps in pregnancy care and support new biomedical discoveries.
WORCESTER, MA — A medical school in Worcester has recieved state funding to address gaps in pregnancy care and support new biomedical discoveries.
Two UMass Chan Medical School research projects were awarded funding from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center. The money will help researchers develop artificial intelligence tools to identify pregnancy-induced hypertension earlier and establish a colorectal cancer biobank using samples from diverse patient populations, according to a Tuesday announcement from the school.
Feifan Liu, associate professor of population and quantitative health sciences, and Crista Johnson-Agbakwu, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and executive director of the Collaborative in Health Equity, are leading the pregnancy care initiative.
Their team plans to design AI tools that can help clinicians identify patients at risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension while producing accurate and equitable results across diverse populations.
“Pregnancy-induced hypertension is one of the most common and dangerous complications of pregnancy, and it falls hardest on the communities that already face the steepest barriers to care,” Liu said. “We are very grateful for this support from MLSC allowing us to build AI that is accurate and fair by design, so clinicians can identify these cases earlier and more equitably for every birthing person in Massachusetts.”
The awards are part of a $10 million investment by the Healey-Driscoll administration and the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center in women’s health research and the state’s life sciences industry.
“For too long, conditions that affect women have been underfunded and understudied,” Gov. Maura Healey said. “These investments will help researchers close those gaps, improve care for patients and strengthen our life sciences leadership while creating economic opportunity across Massachusetts.”
