Briana Williams

Student NameBriana Williams
Faculty Mentor NameReem Abu-Rustum
CollegeCollege of Medicine
MajorHealth Science
MinorPublic Health; Health Disparities in Society
Research InterestsHealth disparities and obstetrics
Academic AwardsN/A
OrganizationsAlpha Epsilon Delta, SOCIAL Gators, Health Professions College Counsel, IMPACT Autism
Hobbies and InterestsMy favorite things to do are go to the gym and beach. I also love traveling and learning about different cultures.

Research Project

Creating a Bank for Congenital Fetal Abnormalities at UF Health?

Congenital malformations affect roughly 3-5% of all pregnancies. In this day and age and with the technological advances, we are able to diagnose a significant proportion prenatally and at early points in gestation. Some of the biggest concerns are arriving at accurate diagnoses, not missing major malformations, and avoiding undue parental anxiety. At UF Health Prenatal Diagnostics, a team of physicians and sonographers is involved in daily screening of women with various backgrounds and medical comorbidities in order to arrive at accurate prenatal diagnoses using sonographic as well as invasive and noninvasive modalities. The aim of this project is to create an ongoing data bank of all patients who give their consent to participate and who have been diagnosed of having a fetus with a congenital malformation. We are in the process of obtaining IRB approval in order to be able to create the data bank which shall have patient demographic information, pertinent medical history, and delivery outcomes. In addition, the bank will include gestational age at fetal diagnosis, the type of fetal abnormality suspected, any workup during pregnancy as well as neonatal outcomes in terms of gestational age at delivery, neonatal birth weight, need for NICU admission, and postnatal confirmatory tests in order to verify the accuracy of the prenatal diagnosis. By creating a bank, we thus may have the opportunity to learn more about risk factors and outcomes.