UCLA Depression Grand Challenge Co-Director Michelle Craske, PhD, was awarded funding from the Foundation for Women’s Health on March 12, 2025, which will contribute to a new Depression Grand Challenge study pairing digital sensing technology with STAND. Craske is one of five awardees to receive an inaugural grant from the foundation, which funds women’s health research.
The study leverages STAND for perinatal depression (STAND for PND), a version of STAND specifically adapted for birth parents in the pregnancy and postpartum periods. The goal of the study is to gather data to predict the treatment most likely to lead to symptom relief for low-income birth parents experiencing perinatal depression (PND). Study participants will be enrolled in one of two treatment arms based on their symptom severity, receiving either STAND for PND or clinical care for 12 weeks. For the first four weeks of both treatment conditions, DGC researchers will collect data from digital sensors on smartphones and smart watches and assess whether these data can be used to predict participants’ treatment outcomes.
Low-income parents’ access to treatment for PND has historically been limited due to cost, time and logistical demands of in-person care. The overarching goal of the study is to develop a tool to predict the right treatment at the right time for individuals with PND, ultimately improving the scalability and accessibility of PND treatments, particularly for those who do not typically have access to such services.
The Foundation for Women’s Health identifies the gaps in rigorous research of women's health and then funds the most promising studies to fill those holes, prioritizing upstream health innovations for adolescent girls and young women. They look at the funding landscape holistically across the entire continuum of the female life cycle to identify where funding opportunities do not currently exist in order to strategically and efficiently fill the holes in research and achieve gender equity in health. To learn more about the Foundation for Women’s Health, visit its website.
