Jenna Nobles and Florencia Torche received a 2023 Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) for their paper “Vaccination, immunity, and the changing impact of COVID-19 on infant health.”
The abstract of the award-winning paper states, “Maternal COVID-19 infection has been associated with increased risk of preterm birth, which can have lifelong health and socioeconomic consequences. The authors of this study analyzed population-level data on live births and maternal COVID-19 infection status in California between 2014 and 2023. Comparing siblings born before and during the pandemic allowed the authors to identify the impact of maternal COVID-19 infection and the protective role of vaccination. Prenatal COVID-19 exposure increased preterm birth risk early in the pandemic, but this effect fully disappeared by 2022. The negative impact ended almost 1 year earlier in ZIP codes with high COVID-19 vaccination rates. The results suggest that the deployment of COVID-19 vaccines may have prevented thousands of preterm births.”