Women, Children, and Addiction

This proposed book draws on the expertise of 35 experts in the field of Addiction Medicine to provide the reader with a current and comprehensive view of addiction as related to women, pregnancy, newborns, infants and children. The volume begins by placing current attitudes towards addicted women in a historical context, and continues with contributions on the relationship of gender to substance abuse research, addiction as a general health issue in women, and ethical dilemmas faced when approaching drug use during pregnancy.

The volume discusses high-risk pregnancies and HIV infection related to maternal drug abuse. It details specific pharmacotherapy such as methadone and buprenorphine, and assesses society’s punitive view toward illicit drug using women. Finally, the book describes outcomes of newborns, infants and children born following intrauterine drug exposure.

Health providers in many related disciplines, specialists in Addiction Medicine, social workers and ethicists are among those who will gain insight into the complex interdisciplinary matrix of abuse in women, its unique relationship to pregnancy, and its impact on drug-exposed children.

This book was published as a special issue in the Journal of Addictive Diseases.

Loretta P. Finnegan is President of Finnegan Consulting which addresses education, research, and treatment in issues relating to women’s health and perinatal addiction. She is recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in these fields and credited with the development of an assessment tool for neonatal opioid abstinence which is used widely in neonatal intensive care units in this country and abroad. Dr. Finnegan developed a landmark program which provided comprehensive services for drug dependent women and their children. She has lectured throughout the United States and in many international settings to disseminate her clinical and research knowledge in women’s health and perinatal addiction.

Stephen R. Kandall is the former Chief of Neonatology at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York and Professor of Pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He has published over 70 articles and book chapters on perinatal addiction, authored a history of women and addiction in the United States, Substance and Shadow (Harvard University Press, 1996), lectured widely nationally and internationally, and served on a number of national panels related to perinatal addiction. He currently serves on the Board of the North Carolina March of Dimes and a number of state legislative committees in North Carolina.