Article features Michal Elovitz, MD, and Heather Burris, MD, MPH.
Michele W. Berger for Penn Today: “April 2020 was a confusing and uncertain time. Just weeks after the emergence of the first U.S. cases of COVID-19, guidance on the new virus was changing daily. ‘Only grocery stores were open. People were wiping everything down. All the playgrounds were shut,’ says Penn psychologist Rebecca Waller. ‘It was quite scary for everyone, but we imagined, particularly for pregnant individuals.’
“Waller and colleagues from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) had recently begun working together on an interdisciplinary initiative. They called it the Intergenerational Exposome Project—IGNITE for short—and their aim was to unite traditionally siloed research areas to better understand risk factors for preterm birth and poor pregnancy outcomes.”