After Stillbirth, Undocumented Woman Organizes Partnership To Help Others Find Better Care

When Laura Garcia was pregnant with her third child, a boy she named Matias, she had symptoms that made her uneasy. Her nails turned purple, her feet were swollen and she was vomiting. Undocumented and uninsured, she sought care in a community clinic. “They told me it’s normal,” said Garcia of Norwalk. But one day in her 39th week of pregnancy, as she returned home from work, she could no longer feel the baby moving.

REACH Fund Begins Distributing Grants To Abortion Providers

The REACH Fund of Connecticut, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding abortion care, has begun making grants to abortion providers. “People think that because abortion is legal here and Connecticut has a lot of wealthy areas that there isn’t a need, but there is,” said co-founder Jessica Puk. Medicaid covers abortion in Connecticut, but Puk says the fund will address a need among many marginalized groups, including undocumented women, low-income people who earn too much to be covered by Medicaid, and those who have private insurance with a high deductible or copay costs. “These are real people who need to access real health care and are hitting real barriers to it,” she said. Puk and three other women began organizing the fund in the summer of 2021.

Should Gun Safety Be On Your Doctor’s Check List? Researchers Want To Know Why It Isn’t

Doctor Stacy J. Taylor routinely asks her patients about safe gun storage at home. “I had someone say they put it in their bedside table and it is loaded,” said Taylor, a family practitioner with Trinity Health New England. “So, I said, ‘Maybe that’s not a great idea. If you don’t have a safe, at least keep the gun in one place and the bullets in another.’” Her patient promised to consider making a change. Questions about safe gun storage don’t pop up at every annual physical or well visit.

Connecticut Abortion Providers Prepare For Influx Of Patients Seeking Safe Haven For Services

Certified nurse-midwife Jennifer Love remembers a scene from a training rotation she did many years ago in Cartagena, Colombia, where abortion was illegal at the time. If women came in with complications after a miscarriage or a self-induced abortion, they had to wear a marked shirt and sit in a special area of the obstetric emergency department, where Love worked. “The trauma and the stigma,” she said, “I never thought that we would be moving to where our patients would experience that same sense of fear and shame. It’s terrible. It just breaks my heart.

Churches And Health Care Align To Offer Trusted Space For Addiction Treatment

In the basement of Madry Temple Church in New London, Margaret Lancaster, a health program coordinator at Ledge Light Health District, shows the pastor how to administer Narcan, the opioid overdose reversal treatment. In New Haven, at the Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ, the Rev. Jerry Streets and local clinical staff are offering substance use disorder treatment. These alliances of frontline health care workers with trusted community leaders are addressing the alarming rise of substance use disorders by leveraging the cultural power of churches to reach people in need of help. Overdose mortality rates have risen among all races in Connecticut over the past three years. But the rise has been particularly marked among the Black population.

Advocates Applaud Extension Of Postpartum Medicaid Eligibility

Dr. Veronica Maria Pimentel, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology at Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford, recalls a patient who suffered a stroke soon after delivering her baby prematurely. The woman’s Medicaid eligibility ended just two months after she gave birth, despite the complications caused by her stroke and the baby’s premature birth. Although the woman’s medical coverage ended, Pimentel said, her needs didn’t. “She still needs physical therapy. She still needs occupational therapy.

Home Births Rise In Connecticut As Pandemic Prompts Women To Seek Alternatives To Hospitals

Cameron English got comfortable on the cushioned green exam table as her 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter played nearby. Initially, as midwife Carolyn Greenfield swept a monitor over English’s pregnant belly, there was only an indistinct swoosh. But before long, the instrument found and amplified a distinctive, quick double thump. English was all smiles, hearing her baby’s heartbeat for the first time. After English’s first three children were born in a hospital, she had her fourth child at home in 2020, attended by Greenfield, a certified professional midwife.