Jill Demirci’s experience as a postpartum nurse inspired her to foster innovation for new mothers and families. A fellowship administered by the OIE is making it possible
As a freshly minted nurse from the Pitt School of Nursing, Jill Demirci’s career began in 2005, a few blocks from campus at UPMC Magee-Women’s Hospital, providing postpartum care to new mothers.
“I was excited to help new moms and parents, but many struggled mightily with breastfeeding, and we did not receive much training on lactation,” she said.
As she did her best to support her patients, she became fascinated by human milk as an “evolutionarily perfect” system for the health of mothers and babies alike, so much so that she returned to Pitt to complete her master’s and doctoral degrees with a research focus on clinical and behavioral interventions for improved breastfeeding.
“There is so much we need to do to support new parents,” she said. “The state of science in women’s health is so far behind when it comes to evidence-based protocols. It’s like the wild west,” she said, in comparison to most other areas in healthcare.
After completing her postdoctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Pediatrics, she joined the faculty as an associate professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Development at the School of Nursing, where she also serves as the director of the Maternal/Perinatal and Reproductive Health Research Hub. Among other things, her research has explored solutions to address the interplay of psychological, behavioral, and physiological reasons for low milk supply.
As her career in academia progressed, she realized that unless she took action to implement some of the ideas coming from her research, they might not have the impact that she wanted to achieve.
“I’m good at research. I can write a solid grant proposal. At the end of my life, however, what will be the worthwhile thing that I would want to leave behind? For me, that will be to have optimized the way care for new parents and families is delivered at a wide scale,” she said.
Building a Better System
A new opportunity arose last year that catalyzed her action. She applied for a fellowship through the Pitt Empowering Innovation, Incubation and Impact (EI3) program offered through the Innovation Institute, part of the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The fellowship has allowed her to direct 15 percent of her time to exploring innovation and entrepreneurship and begin testing some of the interventions from her research under the guidance of professional mentors.
“I came to the EI3 program thinking about how we can innovate and improve the experience for families and parents and to create a medical home for postpartum parents who want to breastfeed and need help navigating challenges,” she said.
Her first initiative is developing a medical record and health portal system integration to safely and efficiently match mothers with surplus milk to those with insufficient supply or who may be unable to breastfeed, including adoptive and surrogate families. Demirci said her goal with this program, which she calls Milk Match, is to provide women ineligible for pasteurized donor milk from milk banks with access to infant feeding alternatives beyond formula.
This project received a grant from the Pitt Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute through its Un-Challenge Funds, and has most recently gained additional support through the Pitt Research funding mechanism, Momentum Funds
She said her new funding will allow her to conduct problem validation with potential end-user parents and clinicians, build the match algorithm and milk delivery system, and develop a business plan to test the system.
“We want to understand how we can create the most useful system, and interviews with ecosystem stakeholders and potential partners will help ensure we don’t duplicate or interfere with existing services that are working well,” she said.
She is also seeking regulatory guidance to ensure the program meets safety and ethical standards. If it is successful in Pittsburgh, she said she would look to market the program to scale it to other health systems outside the region.
Even as she gets this program off the ground, Demirci has set her sights higher. She is exploring the creation of a center at the School of Nursing that would provide families with a full scope of lactation care with wrap-around breastfeeding-adjacent services and specialty care provided in-house or by partners. Services could include maternal mental health, doula care and peer support, social support resources, and specialty services like infant speech language pathology, physical therapy, and craniosacral therapy. The center would also have a complementary focus on research and innovation that addresses common and intractable breastfeeding problems experienced by families.
“I am envisioning a resource to serve the local community, accelerate research innovation in the lactation space, and serve as a model for nurse- and community-led clinical and research innovation for maternal health that can be duplicated in other places,” she said. While still in the early stages, Demirci said she has found encouragement from School of Nursing leadership, including Dean Christine Kasper and Senior Associate Dean for Research and Scholarship, Yvette Conley, who recognize the potential impact of such a resource on families and on Pitt’s role in maternal-child health innovation.
Leaning into Pitt’s Innovation Ecosystem
Demirci said that even as her innovation fellowship winds down through its second and final year of support, she continues to lean on Innovation Institute staff and mentors.
“I can call or text them whenever I’m navigating some new area that I’m not trained in, and they will always make time for me,” she said. She pointed out that when she was preparing to apply for the Momentum Funds grant, she met with her mentors at least ten times as she refined her presentation pitch.
“I’m so grateful to people like Peter Allen and John Inserra from the Innovation Institute and my mentor, Maura Rosenfeld,” she said. “They are so giving of their time and expertise and genuinely excited to help researchers like me launch into the innovation and commercialization space.”
Demirci is now conducting market analysis for the Milk Matching system, including interviewing and conducting focus groups with families, care providers, and community leaders. For the breastfeeding research, innovation, and clinical support center, she is developing initial funding strategies to support and sustain each focus area and exploring potential space options.
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