Reducing sedentary behavior is a new strategy that may improve cardiovascular health among young women, a group recently identify as having accelerated, sex-specific cardiovascular risk development that is even higher when the woman has experienced an adverse pregnancy outcome.
This project seeks to thoroughly and efficiently investigate relationships between sedentary behavior and all-day activity patterns with ideal cardiovascular health components (blood pressure, body mass index, cholesterol, and glucose) by conducting an ancillary study set within an existing longitudinal cohort of more than 4,000 young women (i.e., Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study Monitoring Mothers-to-Be Heart Health Study [nuMoM2b HHS]). By adding gold standard sedentary behavior measurement, using emerging statistical methods in physical activity epidemiology, and adding measurement of subclinical cardiovascular mechanisms that could link sedentary behavior to cardiovascular disease outcomes, this study has high potential impact to inform novel behavioral interventions that may reduce cardiovascular risk development among young women.