Contextualizing Life Context: Discrimination, Structural Competency, and Evaluation in the Treatment of Pregnant Women With Opioid Use Disorder

Abstract

We respond to four commentaries (Beatty, 2020; Knight, 2020; Premkumar, 2020; Roberts, 2020) on our article (Preis et al., 2020). These commentaries extended our focus on life context and prenatal care of opioid using women to other vital topics, including the legacy and continuing impact of societal and institutional racism and other forms of discrimination against substance-using and/or pregnant women of color and the need to evaluate the impact of new assessment approaches and policies before they are recommended for wide use. We highlight these critical issues and the ways that we have attempted to address them to improve research and care for pregnant women with opioid use disorder (OUD).

Keywords:

• Opioid use disorder
• pregnant women
• women of color
• psychosocial screening
• life context
• addiction

Disclosure Statement

The authors have no financial interest or benefit to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Presidential Post-Doctoral Fellowship from Tel Aviv University to the first author.