County Provides $2.3 Million Through Opioid Settlement to Treatment Programs for Moms and Babies
June 07, 2021
CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County has directed $2.3 million to the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine—the fiscal agent for the First Year Cleveland infant mortality reduction program—for two strategies directly supporting infants and mothers dealing with substance use disorders as part of the County’s opioid litigation settlement with Johnson & Johnson in 2019.
The University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Interdisciplinary Substance Exposure (RISE) programs, RISE-Moms and RISE-Peds, are designed to address the needs of children and their pregnant and parenting mothers with a history of substance use through a maternal-infant model integrating obstetric and pediatric care. The programs will provide treatment for mothers and their children dealing with opioid addiction. This treatment includes medical treatment, counseling services, and connection to external partners and programs that can help keep mothers on a positive path toward recovery.
A key feature of the RISE program is integrated obstetric, pediatric, developmental-behavior pediatrics and psychology, and maternal mental health care with co-located clinics at the UH Rainbow Ahuja Center for Women & Children in MidTown.
RISE supports mothers with a history of substance use through preconception, pregnancy and one year postpartum, and optimizes outcomes for infants with prenatal opioid exposure with the goal to keep children with their mothers. The program will promote parent-child bonding and attachment, ongoing support of mothers in their recovery from substance use disorders through medical and psychosocial treatment and support, and prevent adverse health consequences of opioid exposure, thereby reducing hospitalization and readmission.
“Mothers with substance use disorders need long-term support in order to successfully recover, which these two UH Rainbow Babies and Childrens programs provide,” said County Executive Armond Budish. “We are happy to be supporting programs that will have a lasting impact on mothers and their children. This is an important step in our program to treat addiction through our settlement funds.”
Tags: Addiction, Opioid Epidemic, Pediatrics