If your practice offers postpartum care or early well-baby care to at least 50 women or their babies each year, consider joining a study on postpartum depression, or PPD. You'll help build information on identifying and managing PPD in women during their first year after giving birth.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality is funding the study, a project of AAFP's National Research Network. The project will assess the effect of a PPD screening and follow-up management program both on patients and practices. Study participants will
- receive two days of training;
- enroll at least 50 women during a two-year period;
- work with the central study team to collect data from medical records;
- use PPD tools; and
- receive reimbursement for each year of the project, which is expected to require participation for 36 to 40 months.
Family physicians have already begun asking to participate in the study, which is based on the work of FP Barbara Yawn, M.D., M.Sc., director of the research department at Olmsted Medical Center, Rochester, Minn., and of others in the department. For more information, contact Yawn, the principal investigator, at (507) 287-2758 or yawnx002@umn.edu, or Debbie Graham, M.S.P.H., NRN associate research director, at (800) 274-2237, Ext. 3176, or dgraham@aafp.org.
