Postpartum depression (PPD) was a debilitating and costly condition affecting over 20% of postpartum women and disproportionately impacted Black and Latina women. The COVID-19 pandemic led to a severe increase in the rate of depression while the US was already struggling with deep-seated inequities in mental health care for Black and Latina populations. The US Preventive Services Task Force had recently recommended that women at increased risk of PPD be referred for counseling to reduce the risk of PPD. However, numerous patient-level (e.g., lack of time or money) and system-level barriers (e.g., shortage of providers), now compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, posed challenges to the receipt of counseling, particularly among Black and Latina populations, who already experienced a lower rate of treatment initiation.

There had been an urgent need for evidence-based, accessible, and scalable mental health care options for these high-risk and vulnerable women. Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) were effective and theory-driven interventions for reducing depression symptoms. However, standard MBIs required 30+ hours of in-person or online sessions over 8 weeks and were often too intense for pregnant women with high depression symptom burdens. A pilot study of a self-paced, small-dosage (10-20 minutes/day for 6 weeks), mobile-based (mHealth) MBI for pregnant women with high depression symptoms demonstrated promising feasibility and preliminary efficacy results in reducing depression symptoms, providing support for a fully-powered trial.