Jackie Knupp Patterson, MD, MPH, received the 2020-2021 James W. Woods Junior Faculty Award for her work on reducing intrapartum mortality and morbidity in low-income countries.
Jackie Knupp Patterson, MD, MPH, assistant professor in the division of neonatal-perinatal medicine within the UNC Department of Pediatrics, received the 2020-2021 James W. Woods Junior Faculty Award, given to specifically recognize a member of the School of Medicine clinical faculty. Patterson will speak about her work at the 2020-2021 Jefferson-Pilot Fellowships in Academic Medicine and James W. Woods Junior Faculty Award Seminar that will take place on Wednesday, October 21 from 1pm-2pm during UNC Research Week.
“The School of Medicine is home to many outstanding clinician-scientists who are responsible for the high-impact translational research at UNC, and Jackie Patterson is most certainly one of our outstanding junior faculty,” said Blossom Damania, PhD, UNC School of Medicine Vice Dean for Research.
Patterson received her medical degree from UNC, remained at the university for her residency and fellowship, and was recruited to the faculty in 2017 as an assistant professor in neonatal and perinatal medicine. She is an expert in technology-based interventions to improve perinatal mortality in low and lower-middle income countries (LMIC), and has a special focus on newborn resuscitation. Patterson works primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where she also conducts clinical trials to improve maternal and newborn health as a co-investigator for the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Global Network (UNC PI: Carl Bose; UNC co-investigator: Melissa Bauserman). She is currently developing a mobile health application to provide real-time feedback and post-event debriefing to providers of newborn resuscitation in LMICs (Funding: NICHD Phased Innovation Award).
Patterson is also an investigator for the Limiting Adverse Birth Outcomes in Resource-Limited Settings (LABOR) study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The LABOR Study aims to generate perinatal data from subjects in Zambia, Ghana and India to improve maternal and newborn outcomes by developing new tools for health facilities (UNC PI: Jeff Stringer; UNC Co-I: Joni Price). The LABOR study is precisely identifying intrapartum-related neonatal encephalopathy in the cohort, a condition that can result in lifelong neurodevelopmental disability. Using support provided by the James Woods Award, Patterson will advance understanding of intrapartum-related neonatal encephalopathy in LMICs by identifying risk factors associated with encephalopathy, defining feasible, surrogate measures of encephalopathy, and evaluating these measures in a newborn resuscitation clinical trial.
“Jackie’s work has great impact on the health of women and children around the world, and we are delighted to bestow her with this award,” said Damania.