Dr. Kristin Tully

Kristin Tully, PhD, of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute (CGBI), has been recognized with the Improving Human Health Award, presented by the North Carolina Translational & Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Tully is a research associate in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. She also is the project manager of two federally funded research studies on infant sleep development (through the Center for Developmental Science) and a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Engagement Award on unmet maternal health needs (through the UNC Center for Maternal and Infant Health and CGBI).

Tully received the award in support of a project that will design and develop infant side-car bassinets for use in United States hospital postnatal units.

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In the weeks following childbirth, mothers must adapt to plunging hormones, recover from birth and learn how to feed and care for a new infant. Amid these challenges, moms receive minimal support from the healthcare system. Postpartum visits are typically scheduled four to six weeks after birth, leaving moms to cope on their own for more than a month. In 1975, childbirth educator Shelia Kitzinger argued that moms need more in the weeks following birth:

“There is a fourth trimester to pregnancy, and we neglect it at our peril. It is a transitional period of approximately three months after birth, particularly marked after first babies, when many women are emotionally highly vulnerable, when they experience confusion and recurrent despair, and during which anxiety is normal and states of reactive depression commonplace.”

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