HOUSTON – Houston is a large city that can pride itself on several things, and health experts will be the first to attest to this city’s medical system - especially when getting access to specialists and specialty care. But what good is that if the communities impacted by health disparities have limited access to those resources?
LIST: Resources for pregnant women across the Houston area
Since June of this year, six infants have been abandoned in the Houston area, and two of the babies did not survive.
The motivations for why the parents did it are neither here nor there, but KPRC 2 has extensively been highlighting resources for pregnant women across the Houston area. Namely, the Safe Haven Law - otherwise known as the Baby Moses Law, where parents struggling with caring for a newborn can confidentially bring their baby to approved locations, including hospitals, fire stations, free-standing emergency centers, or emergency medical services (EMS) stations.
Researchers like McClain Sampson, an expert in Maternal and Reproductive Health at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, are unable to find an adequate correlation between the Baby Moses Law and its effectiveness for communities of color - or its effectiveness in decreasing the number of infant abandonments overall.
“That law was passed in 1999 with basically on the premise that this would be an option that might help to decrease, unintended births and pregnancies,” she explained to KPRC 2 via Zoom. “The problem is, it is done anonymously and we really don’t have data that can correlate and that can show has it been effective in decreasing the number of abandonments that are like what we’ve seen here, where they’re abandoned in ditches and in environments where they can’t possibly survive? So, unfortunately, we can’t really draw any conclusions about the effectiveness.”
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Dr. Sampson adds that it’s only a small percentage of people who have relied on the Safe Haven Law, according to the Texas Department of Child Protective and Family Services.
“There were about 69 infants that have been surrendered safely in the last five years and to give you some context of numbers, just in Harris County, we have nearly 60,000 live births a year. So when you look at those numbers, it’s a very small percentage,” she explained.
KPRC 2 has tried to destigmatize using the Baby Moses Law like our Bill Barajas demonstrating the process of physically handing their newborn to a firefighter. Brittany Jeffers also heard from another firefighter about his real-life experience of being handed a baby.
However, Dr. Sampson notes the reality is more complicated than that. When she began researching reproductive health, a former program director told her frankly, “After working with hundreds and hundreds of women over the years, this to me looks like young girls that are scared and have been in denial of having a baby, and they just need to get rid of it quick.”
“They aren’t thinking straight,” she continued. “It really reflects the decision-making of somebody really young and panicked. And I also think that those people are not going to connect the dots about a law that exists like this, and they probably aren’t looking for those kinds of solutions and just looking to make it all go away.”
Regardless of someone’s motivation to abandon their child, my point to Dr. Sampson, and in this article, is that in light of this happening, how do we prevent this from happening? The fact that six infants have been abandoned since June when one is too many.
It’s also factual though, that there are disparities, especially in reproductive health, where Black mothers and babies face an increased risk for complications and premature birth.
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This isn’t new information, so I asked if there are enough outreach efforts. In other words, how can patients and doctors perform their due diligence when there are still disparities like digital divides or scholarly work published in journals whose primary audience is other scholars?
“What I see happen with policy is that it’s not being communicated on a community level,” she replied. “It’s ineffective messaging. So the messaging about these solutions really is not usually culturally, linguistically, or educationally relevant. A lot of women get their information about reproductive health from their families, from their friends, from TV shows. They aren’t out there reading peer-reviewed journals or really even knowing what to ask at the doctors.”
“So I think that if we want a society that is healthier, which is absolutely critical, if you want safer communities that have healthier communities, and the community needs to have more of a voice about how they can access health care options,” Dr. Sampson continued. “And I think that I would love to see policies that really come with funding and that enforce community-based messaging. There are plenty of experts in the community that we could be accessing, as what I’m saying, not just in academic circles.”
This is not to say progress has not been made. In the last five years, Dr. Sampson noted more doctors (especially women and women of color) have been pushing back to address racial disparities, previously only called health disparities.
“It hasn’t been that long when there has been more representation by people of color who are physicians, who are researchers, and that are saying, ‘hey, wait, we’re leaving out this whole group of people when we are talking about this issue’ or ‘we’re not messaging it in the right way,’” she explained. “And now we’re starting to see more push for. Maternal-centric care; instead of just having and sending her to all these different places. And then her infant goes to all these different providers. There is more of a push to include the mom and the decision-making, and, those kinds of things are happening and to include, other options and alternatives for care like community education. Instead of just having education only available at the doctor, we need to get in that community.”
Even for someone like myself who spent the majority of his life without health insurance, the fear of “going to the doctors” is palpable. It wasn’t until I got a job in news, really, and became friends with doctors (shout out to Dr. Ali) but even then, it’s hard to overcome the inadvertent need to neglect our health. It’s also challenging to even advocate for ourselves when we’re at the doctor’s especially because we rely on the experts to tell us what we need to know, but if something doesn’t seem right, how do we push back to an expert who spent decades researching?
“Our reproductive health span takes up about four decades of our lives as a female,” Dr. Sampson noted. “And to have that neglected and to not be educated about the full spectrum of reproductive health as far as when you’re having severe pain, this is not normal; when you’re having bleeding or when you’re not having bleeding, that can mean that you’re pregnant... What I’m trying to encourage people to do is when you go to a health care provider, you can keep in mind that you need to be the expert and how you describe what’s going on.”
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“You need to be the expert and advocating for yourself,” she continued. “You need to be the expert in educating them about you. They’re trying to educate you about symptoms and options, but they don’t know how it feels in your body. So I think that feels a little bit more comfortable for people, as you don’t have to know the solution. You have to be very good at describing the problem to your provider. And if they are not listening, you have got to find a different provider because that can be deadly, especially during childbirth.”
Bridging that gap between doctors and patients is vital to our health, wealth, and overall well-being, but it starts by promoting health literacy. An honest conversation by a care provider, who can assure a patient that everything is going to be fine, will do more than any pamphlet or health brochure.