CDC: A leading cause of pregnancy-associated deaths is drug overdose

Missouri lawmakers and health professionals are wrestling with Missouri’s substance abuse problem. 

Doug Burgess, an addiction psychiatry professor at U-M-K-C, tells a legislative task force that one of the big challenges health professionals are dealing with is substance use disorder in pregnancies.

According to Burgess:   “Addressing substance use disorders in pregnancy is a big one. There’s tons of stigma there, lots of providers are afraid to address it during pregnancy or don’t know how to treat it. Recently there was a study in Missouri where they looked at deaths in women during pregnancy and found that 80-85% of them were preventable.”

He cites a study from earlier this year from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which says that substance use disorders were one of the leading causes of deaths, most of those are due to drug overdose, so says the C-D-C.