Senior Research Affiliate Suzanne Phelan Phelan Helps WHO Build the First Global Pregnancy Weight-Gain Guidelines
Suzanne Phelan, PhD
Professor of Kinesiology and Public Health
Director, Women's Health/Salud para Mujeres
"Using globally relevant guidelines helps ensure recommendations match global realities, are achievable, and support better maternal and infant health." — Suzanne Phelan
For decades, much of the world has leaned on U.S.-based guidelines for healthy weight gain in pregnancy — even though health behaviors, nutrition and living conditions vary enormously from one country to the next. CHR Senior Research Affiliate Suzanne Phelan is helping change that.
Phelan serves on the World Health Organization (WHO) technical advisory group, which she co-chairs with Helena Teede of Monash University in Australia, developing the first evidence-based gestational weight-gain charts intended to work across all geographic settings and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) categories.
Why it matters. Right now, there is no single tool to monitor pregnancy weight gain across diverse populations. Social determinants of health — nutritional status, living conditions and health risks — differ sharply between countries. In some parts of the world, mothers begin pregnancy underweight and malnourished; in the U.S., the dominant concern is excessive weight gain and its complications. Guidelines built for one reality may be unrealistic, or even harmful, in another.
Read the protocol paper here: Protocol for the development of the WHO gestational weight gain charts
