By Kate Greenwood
Cross-Posted at Health Reform Watch
Last week, vtdigger.org ran an interesting article by Laura Krantz on the difficulties pregnant women and new mothers who are addicted to drugs have accessing not just drug treatment but also all of the other services and supports they need. Krantz reported on a hearing before the Human Services Committee of the Vermont House of Representatives at which a new mother in recovery from addiction, “a neonatalogist, a substance abuse clinician, a Health Department employee and a representative from the Phoenix House, a residential treatment facility in Brattleboro … all said women need not only treatment, but housing, transportation and help finding jobs.”
Alice Larned, a substance abuse clinician at the Lund Family Center in Burlington, told Krantz that spaces in residential detoxification facilities are increasingly scarce. The demand for transitional housing for women who have completed inpatient detoxification also exceeds the supply. Add to this the sad fact that women can wait a year or more for an appointment with a physician who can treat them with methadone or buprenorphine. Larned told Krantz that many of the women who start treatment with her are taking buprenorphine they bought illegally, an “indication they want help ‘yet we don’t have the legitimate means for them to get this medication[.]’”
In another story that ran last week on NPR, Steve Zind spoke with Harry Chen, the Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Health, who emphasized the complexities inherent in treating addiction in pregnant women and new mothers. To do so successfully, Commissioner Chen explained, “requires so many different systems working together well: the social service system, the health care system, the substance abuse system and even to some extent the correctional system.”
I confess that one reason that these two articles caught my attention is that Alice Larned is my sister. Another reason, though, is that the problem described in the articles seems like a promising application for social impact financing, something that has been in the news here in New Jersey in recent weeks.