Nurses helping moms beat the odds: Nurse-Family Partnership reaches pregnant women battling addiction, stigma, and fear
Citrus County Chronicle
At the July Citrus County Opioid Task Force meeting, Kristin Nunez, from the Nurse-Family Partnership Program, gave a presentation about her agency and its efforts to support pregnant and new mothers and families using evidence-based home visiting
Nunez, a registered nurse with the program, said the agency specifically serves pregnant and new moms who are using substances that could affect the wellbeing of their unborn child.
“We also serve mothers who are in recovery or on medication assisted treatment (MAT) and mothers and their families who are just worried that maybe medications that they were prescribed or taken over the counter may affect their fetus,” she said. “We serve these women because these are the women with the highest risk factors in the community.”
Nunez said substance use during pregnancy in Citrus County is growing at rates even faster than the national rates, noting that being a rural community, minimal access to healthcare providers and the stigma of substance use are some of the factors that they continue to use and not seek help.
Even more so, Nunez said, the fear of detoxing, especially from opioids, is high on the list of reasons to continue; also the fear of having their child/children taken away from them.
“About 23 percent report tobacco use, 11 percent report alcohol use and 5 percent report illicit substance use,” she said. “And we also know about 20 percent of pregnant women with Medicaid received at least one opioid prescription.
“We recognize that substance use and substance use disorder are very rarely isolated diagnoses and there’s usually comorbidities – mental health (issues), general health problems and socioeconomic stressors. So, we try to take a really multi-focused approach to help them get the care that they need.”
The program, which is free to those who participate in it, consists of specially trained registered nurses regularly visiting the moms, most of the time in their home, but they will go wherever they are.
“We’ve done visits in tents and under bridges and in residential treatment facilities and just about everywhere else that you can think of,” she said.
She said they try to enroll the moms during pregnancy and then continue the visits, mom and child together, until the child’s second birthday.
“We feel like we can be a really strong tool to help these women get the care that they need,” Nunez said. “We try to empower the moms to make lifestyle changes. Often, they have not seen healthy lifestyles modeled during their childhood. So, it’s important that we try to model those types of changes and help evoke them into making different decisions.”
She said that what often results is a close therapeutic relationship between the moms and the nurses, and the nurses become someone the women trust.
“So, we get a lot of those questions that they’re nervous asking their regular health care professionals, or we’ll help them advocate so that their concerns or their needs are heard,” she said. “And we talk about pregnancy health and infant safety and infant care. Then as the babies grow, we focus on growth and development and we do some goal setting and reintegration back into the community.”
Although the program is designed for WIC- or Medicaid-eligible pregnant women and/or teen moms, any pregnant woman can enroll.
Learn more about Nurse-Family Partnership at www.chsandhsncf coalitions.org/programs/nurse-family-partnership.
Contact Kristin Nunez, R.N., BSN, IBCLC, Program Nurse Supervisor, at knunez@wellflorida.org or 352-681-1698.
