Summit convenes providers, advocates and experts to discuss access & safety issues for infants
WASHINGTON – On Thursday, October 26, the Institute for Patient Access and National Coalition for Infant Health will host the 2017 Infant Health Policy Summit in Washington, DC, to explore patient access and safety issues facing vulnerable infants and their families. The summit will feature keynote remarks by Adam Busby, star of TLC’s “OutDaughtered” and paternal postpartum depression advocate. Experts, including CDR Sarah Schillie, MD, CDC Division of Viral Hepatitis, will discuss the opioid epidemic and subsequent increase in hepatitis C carriers and vertical transmission to babies.
Summit discussions include: (1) Milk Matters: Diversity, Quality & Safety; (2) The RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus) Story: When Treatment is Out of Reach but Not Out of Mind; (3) Safety in the NICU: New Tubes, New Problems?; and (4) Vertical Transmission: A New Wave of Hepatitis C Carriers.
Summit attendees include health care providers, representatives from national nursing and physician organizations, and national and regional preemie parent organizations.
STATEMENT FROM MITCHELL GOLDSTEIN, MD, NATIONAL COALITION FOR INFANT HEALTH MEDICAL DIRECTOR:
“Infants, especially those born premature and medically fragile, are an often voiceless population. They face serious health challenges and barriers to accessing physician-recommended therapies. Their families carry a disproportionately heavy emotional and financial burden. This summit will educate policymakers and the media and bring awareness to the issues that these most vulnerable babies face.”
Expert participants include: Evan Anderson, MD, Emory University School of Medicine; Julie Ann Burton, Preemie Parent & RSV Advocate; Martha Dawson, DNP, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing; Scott Eaker, VP, Quality and Safety, Prolacta Bioscience; Mitchell Goldstein, MD, Medical Director, National Coalition for Infant Health; Keliana O’Mara, PharmD, UF Health-Shands; Stephen Patrick, MD, Vanderbilt University; CDR Sarah Schillie, MD, CDC Division of Viral Hepatitis; Coleman Smith, MD, Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute; Suzanne Staebler, DNP, Emory University.
Every year, 450,000 babies – one in every nine – are born premature. Prematurity is the leading associated cause of infant death during the first year of life. Premature infants who do survive often face lifelong disabilities, including visual and hearing impairments, feeding and GI complications, cerebral palsy, chronic lung disease, and learning and other mental disabilities. Parents of premature infants often face emotional and financial struggles, with the economic toll of premature care on the nation’s health care system totaling more than $26 billion each year.
The summit, sponsored by Prolacta Bioscience, Becton Dickinson and Shire, begins on Thursday, October 26 at 9:00 a.m.
The summit is open to the press. Press interested in attending should RSVP to Susan Hepworth at shepworth@allianceforpatientaccess.org no later than Wednesday, October 25.