Kentucky ranks second in the nation in maternal deaths.

A majority of those deaths up to 90%, according to the Kentucky Department for Public Health.

They're preventable.

Reducing the number of preventable injuries and deaths in pregnant women is the goal of a new online program at the University of Kentucky.

What we're trying to do is to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality in the state of Kentucky in pregnancy is is a unique time period because many people come to a clinic more than once.

They're coming, you know, particularly toward the year, toward the end of the pregnancy, multiple times in a given month.

So it's a really important time that many might be the first time many women actually are are in a health care setting.

So we have a real upper community for prevention during this pregnancy, during that, during the pregnancy that can set that person up for essentially a positive delivery, say delivery.

So we wanted to look at that essentially two years of a pregnant person's life.

Pregnant or postpartum persons life that we Cierra, there are opportunities for prevention of not only maternal deaths, but injuries as well.

So that's that's really what we're focused on.

That's essentially the first part of the grant.

And what we're trying to do is to address those risk factors that we can in a more public health setting.

And those are what we call pregnancy associated risk factors.

Inside partner violence or violence is a key factor.

Substance use on the part of the the the woman or those in her family or environment, including a partner.

And the last is mental health challenges.

So they may disproportionately mean depression or anxiety that are that are key factors.

But a lot of the work we're doing is prevention more broadly, making people aware of the problem.

We have developed an online training that is designed for what we call helping professionals.

So these are actually students at the University of Kentucky, and it can be in other settings that we might provide this free training.

So it's essentially strategies to bring up the subject and to talk about it and to provide the resources.

The second part of the grant is that of creating a surveillance system.

So in other words, the pregnancy being pregnant resulted in the death as opposed to having other factors that make co-occur.

So those are the pregnancy associated.

And so what we're trying to do is really highlight the pregnancy associated conditions as those that are more in the public health realm that we can do something about.

It's really empowering.

There are things that we can actually do to prevent violence, to prevent substance use, to prevent mental health challenges, or at least support people who have them, as opposed to addressing the problem after it has occurred and has significant impact.

So it's a real opportunity to be to do positive work in this area for others and for for Kentuckians.

Around 3000 students across the UK, nine colleges are expected to participate in the online training program over the next three years.