Watching Over Mothers & Babies

What it reported doing in 2024

The watching over mothers & babies (womb) foundationconducts primary clinical research and collaborates with industry to improve maternal-child health. This work has led to the development and implimentation of new technologies which offer pregnant women and their children new diagnostic and therapuetic options in the goal of improving perinatal & neonatal outcomes. Historically womb was engaged in a combination of innovative research devoted to the treatment of tobacco use in pregnancy in an effort to increase cessation rates among pregnant women. While that goal remains, womb has diversified and is committed to addressing other important health initiatives most recently womb has applied for research funding to apply several of the same principles to opioid dependence disorder in an effort to better manage opioid use in pregnancy. Womb is still evaluating its success with motivational counseling directed at the pregnant women and woman's partner to assist in the smoking cessation. This project is called "family alliance and compares motivational counseling to the standard prescriptive techniques, commonly used in clinical practice. The Arizona biomedical research commission provided the early funding for this trial. In the early phase of this study, dr. Miller was still full-time faculty at the university of Arizona, however upon leaving his position, he desired to continue this work through the creation of the womb foundation.in the past several years womb has become more involved in vaccine research. The work was focused on reducing the risk of covid and rsv by immunizing pregnant women and conveying passive immunity to the fetus as we do with several other viral infections such as influenza and pertussis. This work became even more important over the past few years as opportunities to study covid emerged. The goal of significantly reducing rsv in the neonate along with the morbidity and mortality continues to be a serious problem. As a result, more companies have entered the field and the commitment to this research question has expanded. Womb has been fortunate to play a small roll in this research. This work bridges the maternal-neonatal fields which historically has been difficult to do. Looking forward there will be ongoing opportunities to expand on this work as additional rsv vaccines are studied. There is also the potential opportunity to study gbs vaccination which if confirmed to provide adequate protection would dramatically change how we currently manage this perinatal risk. Other active research activities include:1.pfizer developed an rsv vaccine and brought it to the clinical market in august 2023. The rct that enabled this novel product was launched in 2018. A phase 2b randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a respiratory syncytial virus (rsv) perfusion f subunit vaccine in infants born to women vaccinated during pregnancy. The enrollment for this study spanned several years because of the seasonality of rsv. Pfizer received fda approval for this novel therapy but as part of that approval was required to continue maternal and neonatal surviellance for a period of 24 months which is onging. We continue to participate in this trial since the maternal and fetal outcome extend 24 months past delivery.2. Gsk also initiated its own rsv vaccine trial in 2021. The proprietry formulation is different, but the basic construct of the phase iii, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial is similar. This international trial was designed to establish the efficacy of a single dose of unadjuvanted rsv maternal vaccine, administered im to pregnant women 18 to 49 years of age, for prevention of rsv associated lrti in their infants up to 6 months of age. The dsmb noticed a disturbing safety signal and called for the trial to be haulted. Subsequently gsk suspended the trial but has committed to longer terms surviellance of the study subjects.3. While womb remains co

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
• Program expense ratio: 100%; rating input score 100

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -97.3%; rating input score 8; 8th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0; rating input score 2; 2nd percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
• Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -7.4% per year; rating input score 0; 31st percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -7.6% per year; rating input score 0; 28th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: -11.6% per year; rating input score 0; 16th percentile among comparable filings