Bilgay Izci Balserak
University of Illinois Chicago, IL·Medicine & Clinical Research
High blood sugar during pregnancy, including gestational diabetes (diabetes that first appears in pregnancy), harms both mother and baby. It raises the risk of preeclampsia, cesarean birth and large babies at birth, and later of obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
gestational diabetes
maternal hyperglycemia
pregnancy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Test whether the sleep BETTER program improves fasting glucose, insulin sensitivity and glycemic control in overweight or obese African American pregnant women, compared with a Birth-Prep control, in a 150-person randomized trial.
- Test whether sleep BETTER produces longer sleep, better sleep quality and earlier sleep timing than Birth-Prep from mid-pregnancy to 34–36 weeks, using sleep monitoring in free-living conditions.
- Explore whether economic hardship, psychosocial stress and experiences of unfair treatment change how well the sleep intervention works for participants.
More about the research
African American pregnant women, especially those who are overweight or obese, face the highest risk. They also tend to sleep less and less well than White women. Short sleep, poor sleep quality and late bedtimes are linked to higher gestational diabetes risk, and the team has reported such links. Because sleep can be changed, it may offer a way to protect blood sugar control in pregnancy.
Why it matters
Gestational diabetes and high blood sugar in pregnancy disproportionately affect African American women and carry lifelong risks for mothers and children. If effective, a low-cost sleep program could be built into prenatal care at hospital or community clinics and into standard prenatal education, which may improve glucose control and health for low-income African American mothers and their babies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Linda May
East Carolina University, NC·Physiology
Determine how aerobic, resistance and combined exercise during pregnancy in women with overweight or obesity affect infant heart and metabolic health and growth patterns, compared with infants of non-exercising mothers.
Kaitlyn Stanhope
Emory University, GA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Estimate the direct and indirect effects of lifetime trauma on cardiometabolic disorders of pregnancy, namely hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and gestational diabetes, using the Grady Trauma Project cohort and the EmPOWR pregnancy registry.
Brant Hasler
University of Pittsburgh, PA·Psychology·Early-career
Test how regular cannabis use and four weeks of abstinence change homeostatic sleep drive in 18-25-year-olds, using at-home sleep EEG headbands on nights with and without cannabis.
The school
University of Illinois Chicago: 42 labs on PI Pages, $532M a year on research, 359 research doctorates a year.
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