Valiant: possessing or acting with bravery or boldness. This is a great word in this year’s Women’s History Month theme. Many valiant women, professors, bosses and colleagues have been a part of my life and career journey. Every day we witness valiant women fighting to overcome addiction and rebuilding their lives.
But, in my mind, there’s one woman in particular to whom we owe a great debt for the life-saving work we get to do – Dr. Marie Nyswander, the co-discoverer of methadone treatment. In the 1940s, she was one of the first doctors to advocate addiction as a disease. She wrote a book called “The Drug Addict as a Patient,” and conducted clinical trials and established the first officially-sanctioned methadone clinics which became a model worldwide. That’s brave. That’s bold, and we’ve come a long way carrying out her legacy.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 19.5 million females (or 15.4 percent) ages 18 or older have used illicit drugs in the past year; 8.4 million females (or 6.6 percent) ages 18 and older have misused prescription drugs in the past year. The number of women with opioid use disorder at labor and delivery quadrupled from 1999-2014. There was a time when women weren’t included in clinical trials. Now they are, and because of that, we have new approaches to helping women find their path to recovery. To help women courageously regain control of their lives and be the valiant, unsilenced voices our world needs, let’s always integrate these steps in our work:
- Offer gender-responsive programming. Women have unique needs in recovery.
Create pathways to build trusting relationships with women who are pregnant and using drugs. We need to get them into treatment and keep them. Check out the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) policy position and download this infographic here to share with your teams. - Introduce them to resources such as Women for Sobriety (WFS) and women’s groups in your community or form a group in your center. WFS offers free resources for professionals here.
Have thoughts to share or questions to ask? Reach out to me at Dr. Ben Nordstrom or 603-306-6047. As always, please stay informed about COVID-19-related updates on our website.
Chief Medical Officer