Elise N. Erickson PhD CNM FACNM

Our lab is interdisciplinary and translational in nature. My research program is informed by more than 18 years of clinical experience as a Certified Nurse Midwife, some training in behavioral neuroscience methods and an academic focus on maternal health/physiology. My work centers on the intersection of physiological mechanisms governing parturition, exposures from the social environment, and the clinical decisions that converge on key maternal health endpoints including labor onset and morbidity from childbirth. The goal of this work is to contribute to the knowledge of the causes and consequences of individual variability in parturition to develop personalized care strategies and optimize birth outcomes. 

While much of my work focuses on genetic and epigenetic biomarkers that help us understand oxytocin function and improve the prevention and management of uterine atony- the leading cause of postpartum hemorrhage, I have also contributed many studies examining how clinical practice variation, birth attendant practices, and birth setting associate with maternal health using various phenotyping-based statistical methods. 

Another current study uses a non-invasive wearable device (smart ring) tracking physiological data for the purposes of understanding and predicting events in pregnancy including labor onset using AI/ML.