PROUD | Reducing Bias in Perinatal SUD Care – 7/7/26

The Connecticut Hospital Association (CHA) and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) are hosting a multipart education series, PROUD: Strengthening Care for Parents in Recovery. Parents Recovering from Opioid and Other Use Disorders (PROUD) is a SAMHSA-funded program of DMHAS.

Program description:
Many healthcare endeavors seek to reduce biased care towards pregnant patients who also require substance use treatment. Nonetheless, many individual providers and healthcare systems may experience reluctance to openly discuss biased care during real-time clinical scenarios, before patients come to a disparate outcome. Acknowledging instances that patient care deviates from acceptable norms can be quite uncomfortable. Otherwise stated, one cannot prevent health inequity if they have difficulty recognizing times when it is actively occurring. In response to this conundrum, this presentation helps normalize discussions of biased, inequitable provider behaviors towards patients during real-time clinical encounters. In so doing, systems can better support providers in detecting – and hence avoiding – inequitable healthcare delivery.

Learning objectives:
• Introduce an evidence-based language of how clinicians’ personal biases may mediate diagnostic accuracy and service delivery to marginalized populations at the interface of substance use disorder and pregnancy
• Use these principles to critically examine how clinicians may better discern and counteract personal bias in real-time clinical scenarios

To register for any session in the series, visit the PROUD Trainings webpage at cthosp.org/education/proud. Continuing Education (CE) credits are pending approval. CE status, presenter bios, and session details will be updated on each of the registration pages.

These sessions are designed for physicians, nurses, social workers, quality professionals, risk managers, healthcare executives, doulas, and all healthcare professionals working with patients impacted by substance use disorders (SUD) and mental health conditions.