Monitoring and Understanding Movement Variation In Pregnancy – MUM-VIP
Monitoring and Understanding Movement Variation In Pregnancy – MUM-VIP
Surveillance and Cohort elements
Surveillance and Cohort elements
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Physical activity (PA) supports physical and mental health, providing additional benefits during pregnancy including decreased risk of depression, pre-eclampsia, and gestational diabetes. Infants whose mums were active during pregnancy are also more likely to have healthy birthweights. Pregnancy PA guidelines for women without complications recommend 150 minutes or more moderate PA per week and strength exercises on 2 or more days. Yet despite these known benefits, evidence from small studies suggest around 70% of pregnant women do not meet recommendations (vs. ~40% of non-pregnant women). Not doing sufficient PA impacts the health of both women and children in the short and longer term, and has wider costs to the National Health Service (NHS) and society.
The Problem
The Problem
Data is lacking about pregnancy PA in large diverse samples of women, and about how PA changes over the course of pregnancy. Women may not meet PA guidelines for many reasons, including social and cultural differences, or because of wide-ranging changes experienced in pregnancy. Long-standing perceptions that PA is risky for pregnant women (and infants) may be reinforced by healthcare professionals' lack of confidence in recommending PA.
The Research
The Research
To better understand pregnancy PA to support maternal and child health, we are understanding two programmes of work.
National surveillance: researchers will work with NHS trusts to add five questions about PA and sleep into women's antenatal appointments. Questions will be asked once in each trimester to measure women’s behaviours. Training will be given to midwives to ensure they feel confident asking and answering questions about PA. To aid wider roll out of these questions nationally, we will evaluate question implementation.
Cohort study: we will recruit up to 2500 women, using app-based technology and personal devices (i.e. fitbits) to measure PA throughout pregnancy and relate this to maternal and infant outcomes.
This work will provide important information about how PA levels change over the course of pregnancy; how differing amounts of PA influence women's and infants' health; and how we can better support pregnancy PA to optimise maternal – child health.
Team contact
Team contact
Kathryn Hesketh – Kathryn.hesketh@ucl.ac.uk
Emma Lachassseigne - emma.lachasseigne@ims.cam.ac.uk
Jenny Woolston - jenny.woolston@ims.cam.ac.uk
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