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Maternal/Child Health DBQ7

A. Initial Post: Minimum 1 page (not including citations), AMA format cite all sources

Choose an emerging Maternal and Child Health issue.  Address the following questions:

1. What evidence exists that this an emerging issue?

2. How does the issue relate to the article you read this week?

3. The closing paragraph of the article states: “Although the focus during the past decade has been on the saving of lives, it is also important to look beyond survival to issues of reducing morbidity and disability and improving long-term outcomes of relevance to human development. The close links among poverty, inequity, undernutrition, and human deprivation are well known, and all these factors have been shown to reduce the potential for human development considerably.”  How does this statement relate to the health issue?

B. Response Post: Minimum 1/2 page (not including citations), AMA format cite all sources

Respond to classmate’s post below with one peer reviewed journal article that supports the MCH issue being described. Response Post should include:

1. Identification the journal article with AMA format.

2. Summary of the key findings of the article.

3. How it relates to the Maternal and Child Health issue.

Classmate Ramirez

The emerging issue I chose to discuss this week is substance abuse during pregnancy among adolescents. According to Healthy People 2020, substance abuse is an emerging issue because adolescents who abused prescription drugs have continued to rise over the past 5 years.1 The two main prescription drugs that are being used are Vicodin and OxyContin.1 There are a few reasons this has become an emerging issue. The reasons adolescents are using prescription drugs is because it is more attainable and they believe it is safer than street drugs.1 Women who engage in substance abuse, are more likely to deliver a stillborn baby.1

Substance abuse during pregnancy among adolescents relates to the article, “Global Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health-So Near Yet So Far,” because this is challenging the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 discussed in the article. MDG 4 was established in order to reduce he mortality rates among children younger than 5 years of age by two thirds.2 If adolescents suffer from substance abuse and do not receive treatment on time, then this will not help reach the goal for MDG 4. According to this article, stillbirths is not recognized or address under the global burdens.2 Nonetheless, the number of stillbirths were reported separately. There were approximately 2.6 million stillbirths reported in 2009.2 Overall, still births have not been a priority issue globally.

The statement in the closing paragraph of the article relates to substance abuse during pregnancy among adolescents because this quote focuses on preventing the health issue versus just treating the health problem. With this said, not only it is important to treat adolescents who suffer from substance abuse, but help adolescents who are at risk of substance abuse before they begin. The risk factors would be those discussed in the statement: poverty, inequity, undernutrition, and human deprivation. The adolescents who are at risk due to any of these risk factors need to be a priority in order to prevent them from engaging in substance abuse while they are pregnant to decrease mortality rates among children under five.