When Jameelah Hanif looked up at the scoreboard during halftime on Nov. 30 at the Chase Center in San Francisco, she was happy with her Golden State Warriors being up 61-50 on the Los Angeles Clippers. She was even more thrilled with what was front and center on the scoreboard – Hanif herself. Hanif was […]
The Maricopa County Department of Public Health is about six months into a new effort to help pregnant women struggling with substance abuse.Clay Jones is coordinator for the initiative called Safe, Healthy Infants and Families Thrive, known as SHIFT, which was inspired by a program in Vermont. Jones said the goal is to match drug-using moms with compassionate and
A large study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that both parents with a baby in the NICU are at risk, with depression symptoms identified in 33 percent of mothers and 17 percent of fathers. Strikingly, the probability of reporting depression symptoms declined significantly for mothers but not for fathers after the baby came home.
Last July a controversial Tennessee law that punished women who gave birth to drug-dependent babies was allowed to expire due to concerns it was sending drug-addicted mothers-to-be into hiding, or to abortion clinics to avoid jail time. The law was passed six years earlier, ostensibly to help combat a rising epidemic of babies born addicted to drugs, known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome.
With this law out of the way, the state has returned to its earlier practice of eliminating punishment in favor of treatment. Ballad Health has now doubled down on that approach with a major investment in serving the specialized needs of not just pregnant women and babies who suffer from addition, but entire families.