Marilyn Berchie-Gialamas is Medscape’s choice for Nurse Practitioner (NP) of the Month, a new feature recognizing NPs who have made a significant difference for their communities and developed innovative ways to advance nursing practice. Do you know an NP who you think should be featured? Nominate them in the comments.

You can find her on Facebook and Instagram.

“As nurses, we are not just here for a paycheck but also to give back to whatever community we go into or work with. All that we pour into that community helps improve patient outcomes,” Berchie-Gialamas, DNP, CRNP, NP-C, family NP specializing in maternal health and advocacy in Baltimore, Annapolis, and Howard County, Maryland, told Medscape Medical News.

Berchie-Gialamas has dedicated her career to improving maternal and child health outcomes in underrepresented, underserved populations.

When she is not teaching nursing students (she is an assistant professor in the Department of Nursing within the School of Community Health and Policy at Morgan State University in Baltimore), she might be conducting research (she is a co-investigator for Morgan State’s Center for Maternal and Family Health).

Outside of the academic setting, Berchie-Gialamas also provides postpartum home visits to new mothers in coordination with Baltimore Healthy Start (through Trinity Maternal Wellness, Inc, which she founded in 2018). At the same time, she empowers and supports new mothers by providing education, resources, and community connection (as founder/executive director of the nonprofit Trinity Maternal Wellness, which she started in 2024).

She explained that her motivation is part professional and part personal.

“I’m the youngest of six kids with four other sisters who all had children, and as an African American woman, I saw firsthand what can happen when you’re pregnant and postpartum,” said Berchie-Gialamas.

“After I had my son, I saw a lot of support fall by the wayside, and the focus shift to the baby. And personally, I saw there were very few places I could turn for that support,” she said.

Trinity Maternal Wellness focuses on the mind, body, spiritual, social, and nutritional wellness needs of mothers. Offerings range from healthcare professional-led classes to support groups where moms can connect with others who are going through or have gone through the postpartum period.

“We’re talking about our experiences, we’re learning from one another, creating friendships, decreasing isolation, and also, getting the support and education a mother needs in the postpartum period,” she said.

A Different Lens

Through her research, Berchie-Gialamas discovered that postpartum depression affected women of color differently than white women, and it was likely that diagnoses were being missed due to the screening tools used in clinical practice. While conducting home postpartum visits, she was seeing rates of diagnosed postpartum depression that were significantly lower than normal.

“When we delved deeper, we examined who was screening positive and who was screening negative and identified the problem: the tool we were using (The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) and the population we were using it in were at odds. For example, these women didn’t quite understand the questions on the form,” she said.

Berchie-Gialamas switched to the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 as part of a quality improvement, evidence-based practice project she was conducting that semester.

“The number of women screening positive for postpartum depression greatly increased. I don’t believe we had more women with postpartum depression, just that we had used the correct tool for the correct population,” said Berchie-Gialamas.

On research, she emphasized discovery and curiosity.

“When we look at things with different lenses and from different perspectives, we start to see how inequities are reaching people. We may think that we have a great tool specifically for postpartum depression, but it’s not equitable for everyone for that purpose,” Berchie-Gialamas said.

“My research focuses on how we can support women, especially high-risk women of color, and decrease maternal morbidity and mortality. What are the different ways we can do that?”

Many of the services she provides are geared toward filling gaps. If a woman has an ob/gyn but can’t get to the clinic, how is that beneficial, she pondered, pointing to the number of moms who are delivering but don’t have support, which leads to worsening outcomes.

“I’d like to see a future where this becomes ingrained into the system,” she said. “We have to have more innovative, less traditional ways of reaching these families to ensure they receive the support they need, including middle-income families who don’t qualify for federal assistance and are being forgotten.”

The answer, she said, is a multifaceted approach: research to identify gaps and real interventions that improve outcomes.

“It can’t just be one thing; it can’t just be home visits or research or doctors’ clinics. We all have to be working together to make sure we have evidence-based, culturally responsible, sustainable implementation of services to support community needs,” said Berchie-Gialamas.

With the start of a new school year, she is fully committed to preparing the next generation of nurses to think beyond the diagnosis and consider the social, cultural, economic, and structural factors that influence a patient’s health.

If Berchie-Gialamas’ journey has taught her anything, it is the need to think outside the box to better serve patients and improve outcomes for underserved women of color.

No reported disclosures.

Liz Scherer is an independent health/medical journalist who frequently writes on health equity.