Prepared Providers
Be ready to talk openly and accurately with your patients about pregnancy planning and prevention. Learn more about prescribing the appropriate medications to manage lupus and increase the likelihood for pregnancy success.
Empowered Patients
Our goal is to enable you to build the family you want and empower you with the knowledge and information you need to make all the right choices to sustain a healthy pregnancy.
Better Conversations
Guiding better conversations between physicians and their patients with resources and conversation guides.
What We Do
Our goal is to enable women with lupus to build the family they want. To reach this goal, we need to prepare physicians to have open and accurate conversations about pregnancy planning, prevention, and management. Women with lupus need to hear from both physicians and fellow patients to be empowered to make the best choices for a healthy pregnancy. We offer resources that share facts about lupus and healthy pregnancy and that help clinicians and women to have effective conversations.
Almost all women with lupus can have a successful pregnancy, but some pregnancies will be more challenging than others. The keys to increasing the chances of having a healthy mother and baby is planning the pregnancy, using medications that are compatible with pregnancy to control lupus, and close monitoring by a rheumatologist and obstetrician. This website includes tips, tools, facts, and stories that can help physicians and patients navigate pregnancy successfully.
Pregnancy Prevention and Contraception
The key to planning a healthy pregnancy with lupus is contraception. There is a general misconception that birth control is not safe for women with lupus—this is not the case. Estrogen should be avoided in women with active lupus or at high risk for having a blood clot. The majority of birth control available today does NOT contain estrogen and is safe for women with lupus.
Your story can help
Our goal is to increase understanding between clinicians and women with lupus when it comes to pregnancy planning, prevention, and management. Your story can help! We’d love to share both patient and physician stories about the good, the beautiful, the bad, and the ugly of lupus pregnancy!
Read a few stories and we know that you will gain a new appreciation for the challenges and joys of pregnancy in women with lupus. We hope you find support, solidarity, and gain a new point of view.
Consider adding your voice by sharing your story with HOP-STEP.
Ask us a question
We work hard to create content that answers your questions. Let us know if you have a question that you’d like us to discuss in a future video, handout, or podcast.
Please email your question or feedback to hop-step@duke.edu.