Now that I have your attention…
Who can resist babies doing yoga coupled with multiple exclamation points?
As many of you know, maternal and child health has been my focus for nearly a year now, ever since my strong, adorable, and intelligent granddaughter Selah was born with gastroschisis. Her three months in the Nursery Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Tucson Medical Center (TMC) in 2018 gave me a new appreciation for the human and financial costs related to adverse birth outcomes and high tech medicine.
When it comes to maternal and child health, I strongly believe that the state of Arizona can and should do better regarding:
- Increasing access to prenatal, perinatal and postpartum care.
- Decreasing the rates of premature and low birthweight babies.
- Reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and nonmarital births.
- Reducing toxic stress in and increasing opportunities for families and children by tackling chronic, systemic poverty in Arizona– particularly among single parent households.
I am working with other Democrats to craft legislation for 2020 that will tackle these issues. Stay tuned for more news on this.
In the meantime, if you want to hear my ideas on the state of maternal and child health in Arizona and the US and what we could do about it, get comfortable and watch these three videos. This is my 45-minute presentation at the Salt of the Earth Labor College in September 2019. You also may be interested in this blog post and the related links. If you want to be kept informed, follow my blog on PowersForThePeople.net by clicking on the blue “Follow Powers for the People” bar.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Cross-posted from PowersForThePeople.net.