Dr. Jill Maron, Director of the Mother Infant Research Institute (MIRI) at Tufts Medical Center, has recently delivered an excellent Tedx Talk describing her use of salivary diagnostics in her work with the most vulnerable population possible: premature infants. Dr. Marons talk covers a variety of methods that she has used, and the journey that she went on discovering what she could observe in saliva, and how she could apply to that to improving the outcome for those infants under her care.
YouTube describes the video thusly:
Every parent has felt the deep anxiety of not knowing how to calm their crying baby. As a physician in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), Jill experiences this anxiety every day. As a result, she has pioneered the new field of neonatal saliva diagnostics, exploring the secrets saliva holds for understanding what a newborn really needs. Enjoy her story about the special world of the NICU and how she is “listening” to the babies through their saliva. Dr. Maron is Executive Director of the Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center, which focuses on the lifelong consequences of the biological relationship between mother and baby. Dr. Maron’s research is devoted to finding novel approaches to understanding what is troubling a newborn baby.
