Help Us Improve the Health of Families

Your participation in MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies will help us advance our understanding of pregnancy health and a baby’s development and how they may be impacted by a person’s health condition, medications they take, or vaccines they receive. Our studies are observational, which means you will never be asked to take any medications or vaccines or change any part of your health routine.

Submit your interest if you are a resident of the United States, the U.S. territories, or Canada and our research team will contact you to see if you qualify.

MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies are not currently enrolling participants outside of the United States or Canada. Contact our team if you have any questions.

This Medication Safety Tips sheet, from MotherToBaby and the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center, highlights ways to avoid medication mistakes, such as accidentally taking a family member’s or pet’s medications or taking more pills than needed. Guidance on the use of supplements in pregnancy and lactation is also provided.

Key tips include safe storage of medications, setting reminders and checklists, and consulting healthcare providers about which medications and supplements can be taken during pregnancy or breastfeeding — especially since herbal products and dietary supplements are not regulated by the FDA in the same way that medications are. Following these medication safety tips can help reduce medication errors and improve overall health and safety.

If you have questions about specific medications or supplements during pregnancy or while breastfeeding, please contact MotherToBaby to discuss benefits and risks.

With the launch of our new, mobile-friendly website in October 2020, we have decided to retire or “sunset” the MotherToBaby App for both iOS and Android. By February 28, 2021, the MotherToBaby App will no longer be available for download from Apple’s App Store or from the Google Play Store.

If you are a current MotherToBaby App User:

The app is no longer being supported or updated, so we highly recommend deleting it from all of your devices.

How Do I Prepare for the Change?

Bookmark our website, MotherToBaby.org, and add it to the home screen on your mobile device now! Everything you previously accessed on the app is now available on our mobile-friendly website.

Explore Our Website

Here are some quick links to our most popular content, which had previously been accessible from our app:

Fact Sheets: Access our library of fact sheets on 250+ exposures and how they may impact pregnancy or breastfeeding.

Pregnancy Studies: Get information on our observational pregnancy studies and forms that pregnant women can use to join a study or healthcare providers can use to refer patients to our studies.

Ask An Expert an Exposure Question: Reach out to a MotherToBaby specialist by phone, text, email, or chat to ask questions about an exposure during pregnancy or breastfeeding.

Refer A Patient to our Information Service and/or Pregnancy Studies: Healthcare providers can use this form to refer their patients either to our pregnancy studies or one of our specialists for pregnancy/lactation exposure information.

Baby Blog: Access our library of blogs, which cover a wide variety of pregnancy and breastfeeding exposure topics written by our experts specifically for moms and moms-to-be.

Podcast: Tune in for lively discussions about managing exposure risks and staying healthy with our podcast host and MotherToBaby information specialist Chris Stallman.

Our Website Offers Enhanced Mobile Experiences

Our new website also provides overview pages for pregnant women with hand-selected resources on select exposure topics and offers healthcare providers custom-curated information that is specific to their field of practice. This means that all of our website users can now find relevant information while on-the-go!

The responsive design provide a seamless experience for website users to interact with our services and navigate our resources. We’ve also created an interactive map of MotherToBaby’s coverage to encourage users to find their local affiliate and connect with the team that is working to reduce the chance of preventable birth defects in our communities.

If you have any questions or would like help with information, please contact us at 866.626.6847 or click the Live Chat window in the bottom corner of your screen.

OTIS Offers Relief for Pharma Companies under Pressure to Update Labels with Pregnancy and Lactation Info

BRENTWOOD, TN –“It’s the first service of its kind to aid pharmaceutical companies in this way,” described Stephen Braddock, MD, a St. Louis-based pediatrician and dysmorphologist in reference to a new endeavor offered by birth defects experts at the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS). The unique offering aims to support the implementation of the FDA Pregnancy and Lactation Labeling Rule (PLLR) pharmaceutical companies now must adhere to, creating an urgent need for fetal and lactation risk summaries on thousands of medications.

The PLLR implementation requires the revision of product labeling for all drugs approved after June 2001. “Thousands of prescription medications fall under the PLLR timeline over the next five years, an overwhelming task for many companies,” added Dr. Braddock, who also serves as the OTIS president. OTIS, Inc. is a wholly owned Benefit Corporation established by the non-profit OTIS. “OTIS experts can step in to provide current reviews of existing data and comprehensive risk summaries pharmaceutical companies are under pressure to produce.”

Thorough literature reviews, synthesis and translation of the data are all part of the
OTIS communication process already, according to Melissa Tassinari, PhD, a retired Sr. Clinical Advisor for the US Food and Drug Administration and founding PLLR project leader. “OTIS has been communicating pregnancy and lactation risk exposure through its MotherToBaby helpline service for more than 30 years,” explained Dr. Tassinari. “Pharmaceutical companies can now take advantage of that established expertise to save an enormous amount of time.”

Christina Chambers, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist and OTIS, Inc. board ad hoc advisor said the process for assistance will begin with a quote, which pharmaceutical companies can request via MotherToBaby.org/OTISInc or by emailing contactus@otispregnancy.org. The rest of the literature review process will be carried out painlessly, timely and accurately. “To develop OTIS, Inc. we were supported by an advisory board comprised of the world’s leading experts in the area of prenatal risk exposure with extensive backgrounds in academia, research, government and industry to ensure that the highest quality product possible will be delivered,” she said.

The full OTIS, Inc. Board includes:

• Stephen R. Braddock, MD, OTIS President
• Melissa S. Tassinari, PhD, retired Sr. Clinical Advisor, US Food and Drug Administration
• Sarah G. Obican, MD, University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
• Katherine L. Wisner, MD, MS, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
• Christina D. Chambers, PhD, MPH, OTIS President-Elect, Ex-Officio Member

OTIS, Inc. Advisory Board members include:

• Philip O. Anderson, Pharm D, Author of LactMed® database
• Gerald G. Briggs, B Pharm, FCCP, Co-Author of Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation
• Cheryl S. Broussard, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, NCBDDD
• Alicia B. Forinash, Pharm D, FCCP, BCPS, BCACP, Co-Author of Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation
• Jan M. Friedman, MD, PhD, TERIS Principal Investigator
• Janine E. Polifka, PhD, TERIS Project Director
• Anthony R. Scialli, MD, Reprotox® Director

To read more about the product service offered by OTIS, Inc., please see its digital prospectus here.

More about OTIS

The Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS) is a professional scientific society made up of individuals engaged in assessing and evaluating risks to pregnancy and breastfeeding from environmental exposures. Members include, but are not limited to, specialists in the fields of: obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, genetics, dysmorphology, perinatal epidemiology, teratology, behavioral teratology, pharmacy, genetic counseling, nursing, midwifery, maternal and child health, public health, and includes experts that provide MotherToBaby services and researchers that conduct MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies. MotherToBaby is a suggested resource by many federal agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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Media Contact: Nicole Chavez, 619-368-3259, nchavez@MotherToBaby.org.

MotherToBaby Launches Free App Connecting Moms with Experts in Real-time

BRENTWOOD, TN – What if you could find out the potential effects of a medication during pregnancy by asking a real-life expert instead of unreliable “Dr. Google?” Now you can. In fact, there’s an app for that, according to MotherToBaby, a service of the international non-profit Organization of Teratology Information Specialists (OTIS). As January’s Birth Defects Prevention Month kicks off, MotherToBaby has launched a free, one-of-a-kind app to bring the most accurate, evidence-based information to pregnant and breastfeeding women.

“Information and research about the risks of medications, vaccines, chemicals or diseases during a woman’s pregnancy are constantly changing and can be confusing, or misrepresented in regular internet searches,” said Stephen Braddock, MD, MotherToBaby President who serves as the Director of Medical Genetics at Saint Louis University. “That’s where our new app comes in to help.”

The MotherToBaby app is available on the Android and iOS markets and features the non-profit’s renowned up-to-date library of fact sheets on more than 100 exposures during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Perhaps, its most unique feature is the app’s ability to link the public directly through live chat, email, text and phone with a teratogen information expert (someone who specializes in providing personalized information about the risks of birth defects) so a user can get answers to questions in real-time without ever leaving the app.

Jennifer Zellner, PhD, who is based at UC San Diego and directed the development of the app, hopes this innovative service will fit a need within the health care professional community too, especially when it becomes overloaded during emergency situations such as the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the Zika virus outbreak. “We recognize that health care providers have limited time in a managed care setting to research the questions they or their patients may have about how a particular exposure may affect a pregnancy, or a breastfeeding infant,” said Zellner. “With the MotherToBaby app, providers will now have this information quite literally at their fingertips.”

The app also features a way for a pregnant woman to easily contribute information to the research by sharing her pregnancy. “Including information about our MotherToBaby Pregnancy Studies program in the app is one more way of reaching women and letting them know about this incredible opportunity to make a difference in the lives of future pregnant women by participating in research,” explained Zellner.

More About MotherToBaby
MotherToBaby is a suggested resource by many agencies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Women’s Health. More than 100,000 women and their health care providers seek information about birth defects prevention from MotherToBaby every year. MotherToBaby has been able to embark on new outreach efforts to reach underserved populations and launch new communication technologies through a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, as well as through the generous donations made by the public. To learn more about MotherToBaby, the ways to contact its network of experts, or how to support its services, please visit www.MotherToBaby.org.

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Media Contact: Nicole Chavez, 619-368-3259, nchavez@MotherToBaby.org. Interviews in Spanish can also be arranged.

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