Bio

Kara Boeldt is an internationally recognized patient advocate and peer educator, a certified trauma-informed professional, and the founder of EndPreeclampsia.org, a 50,000 global member charitable maternal health organization. Fueled by her personal pregnancy experience, Kara embarked on a mission to raise awareness and provide support for those facing similar challenges. This volunteer-run, evidence-based online community gains 1,000 new members per month seeking support and information about pregnancy health. 

Kara serves as a patient advisor for several organizations and institutions, including the $10 Million HRSA Grant partnership between the University of Iowa Health Care and the Iowa Department of Public Health to improve maternal outcomes and for the Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative. She is a Stakeholder Advisory Board member of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Science at the University of Iowa and a patient advisor to Comanche Biopharma and their investigatory siRNA therapeutic for preeclampsia. She’s consulted with physician-scientists and research students in Biodesign Innovation and Translational Science programs at Stanford University, Georgetown University, University of Iowa, and Harvard University.  She is also a guest lecturer for the undergraduate Translational Biomedicine course at the University of Iowa.  EndPreeclampsia is a national sponsor for the American Cancer Society’s disease-agnostic biomarker legislation initiative. As part of that work, Kara has provided testimony to several state legislative bodies, met with gubernatorial staff, spoken at policy forums, and campaigned to make biomarker testing more accessible and cost-effective by seeking converge from insurance companies and Medicaid through state legislative processes.

Kara was the HOPE Award Recipient for Maternal Health Volunteer of the Year in 2009 and the Champions for Change Maternal Health Champion of the Year award recipient in 2018. She has led charitable giving initiatives, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for maternal health causes.