Stillbirth Resources

• American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)
  ACOG is a professional membership organization that represents more than 60,000 obstetrician-gynecologists (ob-gyns), medical students, and other health care providers. ACOG members provide information to the public on a variety of topics related to women’s health care, including stillbirth .
• Breaking the Silence of Stillbirth
  In this post on the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, one mother tells her story of stillbirth and advocates for more conversation about this common problem.
• The Compassionate Friends
  The Compassionate Friends is a support organization of and for families that have lost a child.
• Count the Kicks
  The Count the Kicks campaign aims to raise awareness about fetal movement and possible prevention of stillbirth. They offer an app, educational information, and data about counting fetal kicks and movements.
• Family Stories
  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected a series of stories from mothers who have lost a child through stillbirth (also available in Spanish).
• First Candle
  This nonprofit organization comprises parents, caregivers, researchers, and government, business, and community service groups that are working together to advance infant health and survival. The Bereavement Support page provides resources for families that are grieving the loss of a baby, including a grief counseling phone line. A page for Online Support includes a link for an online stillbirth support group.
• Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth (GAPPS)
  GAPPS aims to improve birth outcomes worldwide by advancing preterm research and increasing awareness of stillbirth as a global health issue. GAPPS provides advocacy resources and guilds for families, friends, and community members.
• International Stillbirth Alliance
  This organization promotes and supports research on stillbirth and works to develop methods to prevent stillbirth. The Resources page provides information about support services, memory-making, advocacy, and other resources for bereaved parents.
• Share Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support, Inc.
  This organization supports families that are grieving the loss of an infant or a pregnancy.
• Star Legacy Foundation
  This organization supports stillbirth research and education and offers resources for parents who have lost a baby, as well as their family members and friends.

Please note: Links to organizations and information included on this page do not indicate endorsement from NICHD, NIH, or HHS.

NICHD Resources

• Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch (PPB)
  PPB is the main source of NICHD extramural support for stillbirth research.
  • Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research
    The Global Network, a partnership between NICHD and outside organizations, is committed to improving maternal and infant health outcomes and building health research capacity in resource-poor settings. Network scientists test cost-effective, sustainable interventions for adverse maternal and child health outcomes such as stillbirth.
  • Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units (MFMU) Network
    NICHD established the PPB-supported MFMU Network with the aim of reducing maternal, fetal, and infant morbidity.
• Fertility and Infertility Branch (FIB)
  FIB supports basic, clinical, and translational research to alleviate human infertility, control fertility, and understand the processes of human reproduction.
• Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch (MPIDB)
  MPIDB supports and conducts research in the United States and around the world on the epidemiology, diagnosis, clinical manifestations, pathogenesis, transmission, treatment, and prevention of infectious diseases, especially HIV, in infants, children, adolescents, and women.
• Division of Population Health Research (DiPHR)
  DiPHR researchers design and conduct etiological and interventional studies on population health from preconception through adulthood, taking a life course approach.
• Division of Intramural Research (DIR)
  Within DIR, the Romero Lab—Mechanisms of Disease in Preterm Labor and Complications of Prematurity; Prenatal Diagnosis of Congenital Anomalies—studies intra-amniotic infection and inflammation, vascular disorders, maternal anti-fetal rejection (chronic inflammatory lesions of the placenta), cervical disease, and a decline in progesterone action.

Other Resources

• ACOG Management of Stillbirth
  This document describes ACOG’s guidelines for providers’ management of stillbirth.
• Helping Babies Survive
  The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) runs Helping Babies Survive, a suite of evidence-based, hands-on training programs developed to reduce neonatal mortality in resource-limited environments. The first program of this initiative was Helping Babies Breathe (HBB), a newborn-care education project that taught health care providers resuscitation techniques and other basics of newborn care for the first minute of life. NICHD was one of several international partners that led HBB.
• The Lancet series on ending preventable stillbirths
  The series highlights the state of stillbirths, missed opportunities, and actions that can help end preventable stillbirths and reach goals for maternal, neonatal, and child survival by 2030. This series is a collaboration that involves many countries and professional organizations.
• Maternal and Child Health Library at Georgetown University Digital Library: Infant Mortality and Pregnancy Loss
  These resources on infant mortality and pregnancy loss analyze data, report on research aimed at identifying causes and promising intervention strategies, and describe risk-reduction efforts as well as bereavement-support programs.
• Pregnancy Loss and Infant Death Alliance (PLIDA)
  PLIDA supports health care providers and parent-advocates in their efforts to improve care for families that experience a miscarriage, stillbirth, or death of an infant.
• Stillbirths: Breaking the Silence of a Hidden Grief
  This editorial in the medical journal The Lancet shares the stories of parents who have experienced the loss of a child through stillbirth and talks about the importance of bereavement support and prevention efforts. (Access to the article is free, but readers must create a login and password.)
• Stillbirth Classification—Developing an International Consensus for Research
  This article, published in Obstetrics and Gynecology, resulted from an NICHD-sponsored workshop to review the pathophysiology of conditions underlying stillbirth to define causes of death.
• World Health Organization (WHO): Stillbirth
  This page presents data on national, regional, and worldwide estimates of stillbirth rates.

Please note: Links to organizations and information included on this page do not indicate endorsement from NICHD, NIH, or HHS.