Michel Guillot
University of Pennsylvania, PA·Public Health & Epidemiology
How does the risk of death change in the weeks just before and after birth, and why do some populations lose so many babies at this stage? In 2021 about 1.9 million babies were stillborn and 2.3 million died within their first 28 days, the neonatal period.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Social Science
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
stillbirth
neonatal mortality
late fetal mortality
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Collect prospective data at four surveillance sites across India to explain why stillbirth and neonatal death rates and their age patterns are unusually high, examining variation by gestational age and sex.
- Collect prospective data at surveillance sites in Ethiopia, Gambia, and Guinea-Bissau to measure late fetal and neonatal mortality alongside preterm birth, low birthweight, and small-for-gestational-age status.
- Address undercounting and misclassification of stillbirths versus neonatal deaths found in retrospective sources by using new prospective surveillance data in Indian and sub-Saharan African populations.
- Estimate the causal effect of COVID-19 on all-cause mortality for single-year birth cohorts of males and females in France and the U.S., and for Black and White Americans, using a cohort discontinuity design.
- Measure how far the COVID-19 mortality shock offset or reversed pre-pandemic gains in cohort survival, using formal demographic methods and French and U.S. vital register data.
More about the research
India and sub-Saharan Africa carry the largest numbers. In many of these places, deaths in the first month are unusually high compared with deaths later in infancy, a distorted age pattern of early-life mortality. Existing data are often collected after the fact and are unreliable. Stillbirths and newborn deaths are undercounted and confused with each other. Key risk factors such as preterm birth, low birthweight, and being small for gestational age are poorly recorded. Two projects collect new data to explain these patterns. A third applies the methods of demography, the study of populations, to measure how COVID-19 changed survival across birth cohorts.
Why it matters
Knowing which newborns are most at risk of death, and when, gives health policymakers in India, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and other low-income countries evidence to target care and reduce stillbirths and neonatal deaths. The work may also help check the quality of U.S. stillbirth data. Causal estimates of COVID-19's toll on birth cohorts could inform debates on racial health disparities, health systems, and pension planning.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Daniel Erchick
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Public Health & Epidemiology
Determine whether an early-pregnancy oral health package with antiseptic rinse, exams, hygiene training and supplies lowers the rate of small vulnerable newborns in a cluster-randomized trial of 2,280 pregnancies in rural Nepal.
Steve Taylor
Duke University, NC·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether parasite overexpression of mutant Pfsa3 (PF3D7_1127000), a putative protein phosphatase, nullifies sickle trait's protection, by engineering transgenic Plasmodium falciparum lines expressing wildtype and mutant forms.
Yuri Sebastiao
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Emulate a randomized trial of elective induction of labor at 39 weeks versus expectant management using observational LABOR study data, estimating causal effects on cesarean delivery and on combined fetal and neonatal illness and death among low-risk first-time mothers in Zambia, Ghana and India.
The school
University of Pennsylvania: 90 labs on PI Pages, $2.2B a year on research, 750 research doctorates a year.
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