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Rutgers researchers are breathing new life into a decades-old pregnancy study that followed 4,765 women between 1985 and 2006 from Camden, a city that was and remains one of the nation’s poorest. The research contains crucial insight into maternal and infant health outcomes in a population that’s rarely studied.

The Camden Study was originally initiated to examine nutritional status, growth, and birth outcomes in adolescent pregnancies and expanded to study dietary and molecular predictors of pregnancy complications and birth outcomes in young women.

Scientists collected questionnaires, dietary assessments and medical records throughout early and late pregnancy, as well as at delivery. A subset of moms and their babies participated in a six-week postpartum visit.

But a goldmine of biospecimens – blood, urine, saliva from mothers and cord blood from infants – was collected and remained stored in freezers at Rowan University until now.

Rutgers Health Researchers Zorimar Rivera-Nunez and Emily Barrett took over the project and hope to use it to better understand perinatal health in under-represented women and infants.

“This is a really special project, and we’re so thrilled that we’re the ones to be able to kind of elevate it back into the public consciousness,” said Dr. Emily Barrett in an interview with NJ Spotlight News. “This is a really powerful research tool that we have to understand maternal and child health. And I think for those of us living in New Jersey, it is really exciting to be able to get these insights into the health of moms and children in New Jersey.”

“They were followed across their pregnancy to learn about their lifestyle, levels of things like hormones and inflammatory markers circulating through their bodies, and then to ultimately understand the health of their babies,” explained Barrett.

“There have been some really unique insights generated over the years from this cohort, so things specific to teen pregnancies in particular. A lot of the participants were teenagers when they were recruited, and we’ve learned things about how The mother’s body adapts to the fact that it’s still growing as a teenager, and yet you’re also growing a baby at the same time.”

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(Source: NJ Spotlight News – March 9, 2025)