Prenatal clinic to help drug users awaits UH approval

The staff says the vital facility can open once the university resolves oversight issues

Dr. Tricia Wright says she is "in a holding pattern" on a pilot clinic planned in Kaimuki to provide prenatal care and substance abuse treatment to pregnant women.

"Every day, I go into the hospital and see patients admitted with no prenatal care," said the University of Hawaii assistant professor of obstetrics-gynecology. "It breaks my heart. I have no place to offer them."

She is just waiting for UH to release $400,000 appropriated by the Legislature to the medical school for the program, proposed primarily to deal with crystal methamphetamine ("ice") use by pregnant women. She needs money to hire six or seven more support personnel and to furnish the clinic, she said.

According to that legislation, ice was involved in more than 80 percent of Hawaii child welfare cases two years ago, and little is known about its effects on pregnancy.

But whether pregnant women use ice, cocaine or other drugs, there is no place where they can get prenatal care, substance abuse treatment and other needed services.

Wright is ready to go with a clinic to help such women. She has a site with Women's Way, the Salvation Army residential drug-treatment facility in Kaimuki, and she has specialists at UH who want to assist with the clinic.

Jim Manke, spokesman for the Manoa chancellor, said most of the issues are expected to be resolved "in a matter of weeks."

He said, "We agree that there is a critical need for the clinical services that this funding would support, and in fact our medical school faculty are already doing some of this kind of work."

But in its testimony to the Legislature, he said the university questioned whether appropriating the money directly to the medical school "was the best way to achieve these goals.

"Now that we have the funds, we are doing our due diligence to make sure that the money is spent in the most efficient way to accomplish the Legislature's intent," he said.

Wright said the money was allocated directly to the medical school to get the clinic started, but discussions are under way to channel future funding through the Department of Human Services budget.

The Democratic Women's Caucus, Drug Policy Forum and Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition were among organizations at a news conference Friday calling for release of the money.

Nancy Partika, executive director of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies Coalition, which lobbied for the clinic funding, said, "It is a community priority. It is much needed, and the critical cluster of expertise is in the OB-GYN department of the medical school."

Several hundred substance-abusing women get pregnant each year, she said, and there are limited options to help them.

"I got a call the past week from a woman eight months pregnant. She was concerned her baby would be taken from her (for using drugs), and she has not received prenatal care yet. This clinic would help address that kind of situation, as well as others."

As it is, Partika said, she did not know where to refer the woman to meet her needs.

The university's primary functions are education, research and community service, Partika pointed out. "This clinic serves all three of those functions."

It would provide prenatal care, substance abuse counseling, psychiatric treatment, child care and social services to about 125 women per year.

"It's going to be a model, we believe, not only for Hawaii, but a replicable model for the nation as well," Partika said.

The state of Nevada, having heard about the Hawaii legislation, is interested in similar clinics in Reno and Las Vegas, she said.