Coping with Stress during Pregnancy: Fathima Wakeel Studies the Factors that Impact Maternal Health

The more stress a woman has, the more capital—self-esteem, mastery, partner and social network support, for example—she will need to overcome it. A pregnant woman’s stress-to-capital ratio may play a significant role in her baby’s health, Wakeel says.

“I found in my previous analysis that having little personal capital relative to stress has been related to preterm birth and other pregnancy complications,” she says. “There are many long-term implications to these outcomes. … For example, preterm birth is significantly associated with infant mortality and has substantial physical, cognitive and behavioral ramifications for the child.”

The issue is larger than one mother and her child, she says, as personal capital likely develops over the life course, starting in infancy, as a child is exposed to various risks (e.g., stressors) and resources (e.g., supports or opportunities to learn traits of resilience) in the family, school, neighborhood and other spaces; these risk and protective factors are also likely transmitted intergenerationally.

“We want to be able to intervene and halt that transmission of risk so that we have better outcomes for women, families and the next generation. What are the protective factors that we can help everyone obtain to really bridge those health disparities and promote health equity?”

Wakeel plans to continue measurement development of the construct of personal capital and explore how these measures may differ among women of different races, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. She intends to use large population-based datasets and conduct mixed-methods research, collecting primary data through community-based participatory research.

“My real passion is working with the community to understand what their needs are,” she says. “I want to contribute to the community in a way that they also have shared ownership [over the work we do].”