Victoria Brown, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in the Division of Public Health Sciences at WashU Medicine and fellow supported by a National Institutes of Health T32 training grant (Lowder/Sutcliffe), has received the Provost Impact Award for Early Career Community-Engaged Research for her project, Rebirth: Revitalizing Birth in Rural Communities of Southeast Missouri. The award recognizes Brown’s efforts to partner with rural communities to address the growing loss of local maternity care services and improve maternal and infant health outcomes. The award was presented at the 2026 Confluence Award Research Showcase.
The Confluence Award Research Showcase elevates and recognizes WashU faculty members and their community partners for their innovative and impactful research and for their deep engagement with the region.
Brown’s research focuses on women’s health across the lifespan, including the impact of decreasing access to obstetric care across the US. Through her work at WashU Medicine, she studies the socioecological factors underlying maternal and child health outcomes, with an emphasis on developing solutions alongside the communities most affected. Her award-winning project addresses a rapidly worsening maternity care crisis in southeast Missouri, where two rural hospitals recently closed and a third ended obstetric services in December 2025. With two additional birthing hospitals at risk of closure in the coming years, the region has become one of the largest maternity care deserts in the Mid-South.
“How is it possible that amidst some of the worst perinatal outcomes in decades, we are allowing our local obstetric units to close? The question here is one of priorities—who is supported in pregnancy and motherhood, and who is not,” said Brown. “With REBIRTH we aim to challenge these efforts to deprioritize maternal and child health in the US, by seeking alternative models of care that emerge from the women, families, and communities that have for so long been ignored.”
Through partnerships with the Bootheel Perinatal Network, Building Blocks, Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium, MPower–Mississippi County Health Department, ParentLink and It Takes a Village, Brown is leading a community-engaged study to identify sustainable models of maternity care for rural communities. Using a modified Delphi process that includes interviews with local clinicians, families, maternal health advocates and community leaders, the project seeks to understand how communities are adapting to the loss of local obstetric services and what innovative models of care provision may emerge to fill critical gaps in care. Findings from the study will help inform community-supported strategies to improve access to maternity care across rural southeast Missouri.