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U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown
Brown promotes
bill protecting infants from opioid exposure
Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Caused Approximately 5,100
Hospitalizations Between 2004 and 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today during a markup of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, a bill cosponsored by
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to help prevent and treat prenatal
opioid abuse and neonatal abstinence syndrome passed a key committee
and advanced in the Senate.
“It’s heartbreaking to hear of children who are exposed to opioids
before they are even born,” said Brown. “With admissions for newborns
affected by addiction on the rise, it is clear we aren’t doing enough
to give babies a healthy start in life. This bill would study and
develop new treatment and prevention efforts to make sure fewer
children face this troubling problem. We know Ohio has both an infant
mortality problem and an opioid abuse problem. While no solution will
solve this overnight, this bill can help us start looking at this
two-pronged health crisis in new ways.”
“On behalf of the Ohio Perinatal Quality Collaborative, I applaud
Senator Brown for his advocacy to prevent maternal opioid use and
improve outcomes for neonates with neonatal abstinence syndrome,” said
Michele Walsh, MD, MSE, Chief, Division of Neonatology and Interim
Chair, Department of Pediatrics, University Hospitals Rainbow Babies
& Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. “In the last few years,
treatment advances have decreased the amount of time it takes to wean
newborns from drugs from more than a month to 16 days. Collaboration
among obstetricians, addiction specialists, and other medical experts
will be instrumental in the continuation of developing better
prevention strategies and treatments for mom and baby.”
Dr. Walsh is the neonatology clinical lead for the Ohio Perinatal
Quality Collaborative (OPQC) that has rolled out neonatal abstinence
syndrome (NAS) protocol to 52 of the 54 Level 2 hospitals and three
NICUs in the state. NAS has taken a heavy toll on Ohio’s healthcare
system. Treating newborns with NAS was associated with more than $97
million in charges and an average 15-day hospital stay per patient in
Ohio’s hospitals in 2013.
A 2015 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that between
2008-2014 no federally-funded projects focused on the prevention or
understanding of prenatal opioid use or any costs associated with use
of opioids. While opioid use during pregnancy is sometimes
medically-appropriate, the rate of NAS and misuse of opioids has risen
dramatically. According to the Ohio Department of Health, between 2004
and 2011 NAS increased six-fold from 14 cases per 10,000 live births in
2004 to 88 cases per 10,000 live births in 2011. According the American
Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, between 2004 and 2013,
neonatal intensive care unit admissions for the treatment of NAS rose
from seven cases per 1,000 admissions to 27 cases per 1,000 admissions
nationwide.
Brown’s legislation, the Protecting Our Infants Act, would:
· Direct the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality to conduct a study and develop
recommendations for the prevention and treatment of prenatal opioid
abuse and NAS, soliciting input from stakeholders.
· Task the Secretary of
Health and Human Services (HHS) with leading a review of planning and
coordination within HHS to close the gaps in research and programming
identified by GAO in their February report.
· Encourage improved
data collection and surveillance by the states and promote an increased
public health response to reducing NAS.
Brown is a champion for improving children’s health in Ohio. Last year,
his landmark legislation to battle back against the rise in infant
mortality was signed into law by President Obama. The Sudden Unexpected
Death Data Enhancement and Awareness Act will build on existing
activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to
improve upon the quality and consistency of data collected during death
scene investigations and autopsies to better inform prevention and
intervention efforts related to stillbirths, Sudden Unexpected Infant
Deaths (SUID), and Sudden Unexplained Deaths in Childhood (SUDC). This
collaboration with the states to enhance current methods of data
collection across existing surveillance systems will enable doctors and
researchers to better track and prevent these tragic losses.
Brown also continues to fight to help treat and prevent prescription
drug abuse. Following his urging, HHS announced this month that it
would revise regulations to expand the use of medication-assisted
treatment for opioid dependence. In August, Brown called on HHS to
increase access to medication-assisted therapy (MAT) for patients
struggling with opioid addiction. He is also a cosponsor of The
Recovery Enhancement for Addiction Treatment (TREAT) Act, bipartisan
legislation reintroduced in May that would remove the cap on the number
of patients physicians with proven track records of success can treat
using MAT.
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