In females, critical hormonal shifts occur during puberty, menstruation, pregnancy, and <br/>menopause. The fluctuating ovarian hormone levels across a woman’s lifespan likely contribute <br/>to inflammatory responses driven by the immune system, which is regulated by a variety of <br/>physiological pathways and microbiological cues. Pregnancy in particular results in drastic <br/>changes in circulating hormone profiles, and involves a variety of physiological changes, <br/>including inflammatory responses of the immune system. There is evidence that these effects are <br/>mediated, in part, by the significant hormone fluctuations that characterize pregnancy and <br/>postpartum periods. This thesis highlights and synthesizes important physiological changes <br/>associated with pregnancy, and their potential implications on cognitive and brain aging in <br/>women. A tertiary model of cognition is presented depicting interactions between hormonal <br/>history, reproductive history, and immune functions. This research is important to create a better <br/>understanding of women’s health and enhance medical care for women throughout pregnancy <br/>and across reproductive hormone shifts across the lifespan.

The Healthy Pregnancy Summit is a collection of videos from a variety of specialists detailing how to have a healthy pregnancy and healthy child, based on the latest scientific and medical information. This project summarizes each presentation, and compares to the Healthy Child Guide, a document supplementary to the summit. Finally, this project analyzes the overall usefulness of the summit and each presentation, and suggests areas for improvement.

With recent reports indicating that there is a relatively low number of pregnant people vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States (~30% per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October, 2021), this study aims to understand the reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among the pregnant population in the state of Arizona. Using a mixed-methods approach, this cross-sectional study employs both semi-structured qualitative interviews (n = 40) and a quantitative survey instrument (n = 400) to better understand the reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among pregnant people, with data collected over the course of a few months. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression are employed to analyze the quantitative data and the semi-structured interviews are inductively coded to analyze themes across participant interviews. The results from this study are not only able to help better address disparities in COVID-19 vaccinations among pregnant people, but they also provide implications for vaccine hesitancy overall in order to develop interventions to address vaccine hesitancy. Future research is warranted to better understand regional differences in vaccine hesitancy and differences across populations.