An Allegheny Health Network program designed to help pregnant women and postpartum mothers with opioid use disorders will soon be coming to Butler County.

Called “Perinatal Hope,” the program works as a “one-stop shop” to bring easier access to needed health care services to moms dealing with opioid or substance use disorders. The program will open sites aligned with AHN Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie and AHN’s Northern Regional OB/GYN in Cranberry Township.

Easier access

The Perinatal Hope program gathers together different services, health care professionals and educational materials so that women can get as much support as possible from a routine prenatal visit.

Enrolled patients will be able to access medication assisted therapy for opioid use disorder, care coordination, and education on relevant chronic conditions and drug and alcohol counseling through POWER during their routine OB/GYN exams. The program also extends its services through postpartum.

“When you have a substance or opioid use disorder, it can be a lot of appointments,” said Krista Flaherty, LCSW, MSW, manager of the AHN Perinatal Hope Program. “Combining the appointments makes it less stressful for moms, and easier to get all the care they need at one place.”

Additional services offered by AHN Perinatal Hope at its existing locations include newborn education, lactation support and easier access to care for postpartum depression. The program also plans to launch services including smoking cessation, STD/HIV education, financial empowerment and safe sleep education.

Expanding the program was made possible through a federal grant announced by Gov. Tom Wolf late in 2021 of more than $583,000 as part of a $55 million federal block grant program awarded to the state via the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“New mothers with substance use disorders often face unique challenges, including the relative lack of specialized and prioritized postpartum treatment resources, the stigma of having an infant exposed to substances, postpartum hormonal changes, and postpartum depression,” Marcia Klein-Patel, MD, PhD and head of AHN Women’s Institute, said in a statement.

“For these reasons, among other factors, overdose rates during the postpartum periods are notably elevated which is why it’s so important to continue access to health care and other community-backed programs to better support the entire family, even after delivery.”

Need for services

Flaherty said that Butler County was chosen as a region where Perinatal Hope would expand due to the need in the area for the services the program provides.

“AHN just opened Wexford Hospital, so we wanted to provide these services to the women who deliver there,” she said. “We’ve worked with women in the area in our other offices, and we don’t have an office close to (Butler County.) It was always a transportation struggle, and we saw the need in that area based on referrals.”

In a statement, AHN said the rate of hospitalizations with opioid use disorder per 100,000 residents in 2019 was 293.2 for Pennsylvania, 296.9 for Butler County and 344.3 for Erie County.

The rate of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, a set of complications caused by a newborn baby’s drug withdrawal due to a mother’s substance use disorder, is two times higher in Pennsylvania when compared to the national average.

“Women who have a substance use disorder face a lot of stigma and barriers,” Flaherty said. “It can be very hard for them to sometimes take that first step, and these are such remarkable women who have had a lot of barriers in their life. We try to not be a barrier for them. We feel honored to work with these women, and want to help them in their journey. That’s one of the best things about our staff and our program, is we try to be non-judgmental and meet these women where they are.”

The Perinatal Hope program is currently looking at late February as a start date to offer services to mothers at Northern Regional. Multiple pathways to get connected to the program are available—patients can self-refer, be referred by their obstetric provider, or be connected to the program by family and friends.

“Sometimes, the phone call itself is the hardest thing to do, and there is a link on their website where moms can put in their info in and we call them,” Flaherty said. “Sometimes, they need to hear what to expect before they are ready to come in.”

The program can also help mothers apply for Medicaid if they need financial assistance, she said.

“We want these women to get the help that they need, so we get creative,” Flaherty said.