The Bureau of Justice Assistance, in collaboration with the Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Program team, invites you to this no cost webinar on February 20, 2019, at 2:00 p.m. ET. This webinar will highlight the Massachusetts Moms Do Care Project (MDCP), which provides an innovative and multipronged approach to supporting pregnant and parenting women who abuse opioids.
Core components of the program include:
- Peer-led recovery coaching, care navigation, and wellness planning;
- System change and capacity-building initiatives; and
- Program sustainability by developing regional, integrated, and ongoing provider care collaborative groups.
The MDCP began in 2015 with a grant awarded to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s (MDPH) Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS) by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to expand access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid abuse.
Due to the state’s rising rates of pregnant women abusing opioids and increasing reports of neonatal abstinence syndrome, MDPH/BSAS wrote the grant specifically to serve pregnant and postpartum women. The project was originally implemented in two healthcare systems: UMass Memorial Medical Center in the urban area of Worcester, Massachusetts, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts Health Care in the rural areas of the Cape.
In 2017, under the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission’s Health Care Innovation Initiative funding, MDCP expanded to two more healthcare systems: Lahey-Beverly, Massachusetts Hospital, a suburban community hospital, and Lowell, Massachusetts General Hospital, an urban community hospital. In 2018, MDPH used a portion of its State Opioid Response funding and expanded MAT funding to replicate and enhance the MDCP in additional urban and rural sites: three community healthcare centers and two hospital-based healthcare systems.
The webinar will include an overview of the project as well as the associated evaluation.
Presenters:
- Laura Sternberger, Manager, MDCP, and Director, Pregnant and Postpartum Women’s Services, the Institute for Health and Recovery at MDPH/BSAS;
- Amy Sorensen-Alawad, Program Director and Grants Management Specialist, MDPH/BSAS; and
- Amy Salomon, Senior Fellow, Advocates for Human Potential, Inc., Center for Research and Evaluation.