Grant: Partnerships for Health System Improvement (PHSI)

The proposed work seeks to evaluate the overall impact of integrated treatment for pregnant and parenting women with addictions in Ontario. When women who are pregnant or parenting young children experience problems related to their alcohol or drug use, many do not try to seek help due to fear of child protection service involvement, a history of trauma, and various other reasons. Those who do seek help often report stigmatization by health care professionals and a lack of available services. Integrated treatment approaches, which combine addiction treatment with pre-natal and medical care, have been developed to respond to this gap in services. Despite being available for many years in Canada and elsewhere, little evaluation work has been conducted on these programs. There is a lot that we do not know about who does and does not engage with these services, and what are the optimal combination of services to offer. With our clinical and policy partners, we are seeking to evaluate Ontario's system of integrated treatment and contribute to the evidence base on this unique service model.