Rural Pregnant Women with Opioid Addiction Find a Doctor, Not a Judge (chcf.org)

With her husband and two young children, (Dr. Candy) Stockton packed up and moved hundreds of miles north to rural Shasta County. Today, Stockton, 42, practices family medicine at the Shingletown Medical Center in a tiny town in the shadow of Mt. Lassen, 30 miles east of Redding.

The majority of Stockton’s patients live in poverty. “The economy is terrible,” she said, adding that the lack of educational opportunities for kids creates a cycle of despair that can afflict families for generations. With that despair has come alcoholism and a dramatic increase in addiction to opioids. But what really moved Stockton was the pregnant women she saw who were struggling with opioid addiction, threatening their own health and that of their developing babies.

Stockton saw the chance to make a big difference: Treating pregnant women with opioid addiction would help both mother and baby, two generations at once. When she starts caring for these patients, she likes to start with the same icebreaker: “This is a judgment-free zone,” she tells them.

“A lot of these women who are pregnant and addicted have been treated poorly by the medical community,” Stockton said, adding that these negative experiences reinforce barriers to receiving addiction treatment, a precious resource lacking for pregnant women living in rural Northern California.

To provide better care to patients with opioid addiction, Stockton completed an eight-hour course to become licensed to prescribe buprenorphine, a tightly regulated drug that works by activating opioid receptors just enough to quiet down cravings for opioids. People taking buprenorphine say they feel normal for the first time since they started using opioids. They can hold down jobs, parent their children, and live productive lives. For pregnant women with opioid addiction, it’s the safest known way to ensure the baby is healthy.

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