#THE WITNESS DISCARDED PANELS FREE#
The most important policy change underscored by the data, he says, has been the expansion of free health coverage through Medicaid. Having access to treatment and making sure child visitations happen regularly could be a key to preventing such deaths, Goodman says. Increased screening for postpartum depression and anxiety, starting at the first prenatal visit and continuing throughout the year after birth, is another CDC recommendation, as is better coordination of care between medical and social services, says David Goodman, who leads the maternal mortality prevention team at the CDC's Division of Reproductive Health, which issued the report.Ī common crisis point in the months after childbirth is when a parent's substance use problem gets so bad that child protective services takes the baby away, precipitating a mother's accidental or intentional overdose. "We really need to stay connected while they're in the hospital," Sheffield-Abdullah says, then make sure patients are referred to the appropriate follow-up care "within one to two weeks after delivery." In the North Carolina data, new moms who later died often missed this appointment, she says, usually because they had to go back to work or they had other children to care for. The number one problem, as Sheffield-Abdullah sees it, is that the typical six-week postnatal checkup is way too late. The data highlights multiple weaknesses in the system of care for new mothers, from obstetricians who are not trained (or paid) to look for signs of mental trouble or addiction, to policies that strip women of health coverage shortly after they give birth. What it means to focus on the 'fourth trimester' Both conditions occur disproportionately later in the postpartum period, according to the CDC report. Mental health conditions were the leading underlying cause of maternal deaths between 20, with white and Hispanic women most likely to die from suicide or drug overdose, while cardiac problems were the leading cause of death for Black women. And what we really need to be thinking about is that fourth trimester, that time after the baby is born." Once you remove the wrapper, you just discard the wrapper. The mom is the wrapper, and the baby is the candy. "Once the baby is here, it's almost like the mother is discarded. and in the latest and largest compilation of such data, released in September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a staggering 84% of pregnancy-related deaths were deemed preventable.Įven more striking to nurse-detectives like Sheffield-Abdullah, is that 53% of the deaths occurred well after women left the hospital, between seven days and a year after delivery. The committees are at work in almost 40 states in the U.S. These maternal mortality review committees look for clues to what contributed to the deaths - unfilled prescriptions, missed postnatal appointments, signs of trouble that doctors overlooked - to figure out how many of them could have been prevented and how. She and a team of other medical investigators with the North Carolina public health department scour the hospital records and coroner reports of new moms who died after giving birth. For several weeks a year, the work of nurse-midwife Karen Sheffield-Abdullah is really detective work.
0 kommentar(er)
