Mothers and Babies Qatar (MB-Q): A Postpartum Depression Intervention 

Mothers and Babies Qatar (MB-Q) was a 4-year collaboration conducted from 2018 to 2022 between Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Sidra Medicine in Doha, Qatar. The project was funded by the Qatar National Research Fund’s National Priorities Research Program (NPRP). The project aimed to generate and evaluate a cultural and contextual adaptation of the Mothers and Babies program for pregnant Arabic-speaking women in Qatar. Building on our published protocol paper which outlined the study design and methods, we enrolled 120 participants to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the adapted curriculum, as well as its effectiveness in improving mental health outcomes among pilot participants and those enrolled in a randomized controlled trial. Additionally, given the high prevalence of diabetes among this population, we explored whether the adaptation helped improve the management of this disease. This project was the first international pilot of Mothers and Babies evaluated by the Northwestern University research team and has the potential to guide future cultural adaptations of Mothers and Babies and other evidence-based interventions, as well as the delivery of Mothers and Babies to Arab and Arab-American women. 

Principal and Co-Investigators 

Darius Tandon, PhD, Sawssan Riad Ahmed, PhD 

Contact Information 

For more information or questions about our study, please feel free to reach out to our Director of Research Operations: Alicia Diebold, MSW. 

Publications

• Ahmed, S. R., Watt, F., Mahfoud, Z. R., Korayem, M., Buhmaid, S., Alberry, M., Ibrahim, I. M., & Tandon, S. D. (2023). Examining feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary outcomes of a culturally adapted evidence-based postpartum depression preventive intervention for women in Doha, Qatar: Protocol for a randomized controlled trial. JMIR Research Protocols, 12, e11623. https://doi.org/10.2196/11623