The Family Physician's Role In Achieving Birth Equity In Illinois Through Preconception Counseling And Prenatal Mental Health

I have a question before we kind of dive in.

So I know Dr. Alavi still delivers babies, but for me, I haven't delivered a baby in about 15 years.

Now, I still do prenatal care from time to time, and that's important for me to do that.

But why is what we're talking about important to not only physicians who deliver, but those physicians who may no longer be delivering babies?

Well, first, we really want to see this as a call to action for all family medicine physicians throughout the state of Illinois.

I'm sure many of you are aware in 2025, Governor Pritzker released the Illinois Birth Actity Blueprint, which essentially is a roadmap for improving maternal and infant health care throughout Illinois.

And when we look at a lot of the reasons why our obstetric patients are not having good outcomes, it comes down to complications of pregnancy caused by chronic illness.

And also the leading cause of death is actually from untreated mental health conditions.

And a lot of this happens, a lot of the work that can be done is either in preparation for pregnancy, setting people up for success, or in postpartum period when we're identifying and intervening for pregnancy.

perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, which commonly present after pregnancy when patients are no longer following up with an OB or hopefully they're following up with their FM OB.

So, you know, and as family doctors, all of us treat chronic disease.

All of us are comfortable caring for mental health conditions, a variety of mental health conditions.

And all of us have experience caring for pregnant patients.

And there's these gaps where women are falling through the cracks, especially in underserved areas where we also tend to gravitate to, rural, urban underserved.

There's these gaps.

And we really are uniquely situated to set women up for success, for a successful pregnancy, and also to help them transition back to routine care in the postpartum period successfully by religious using, doing what we do best.

So that's why I think it's important for all of us, even if you don't deliver anymore.

It's very interesting.

Even if you don't deliver, we are the gatekeepers.

Many of us still do pediatric care.

And so even if moms don't come back for their postpartum visits, they will at least bring their kids for well-child newborn visits.

And we can still help them that way.

Specifically in the area of perinatal mental health, we are supposed to be screening them for depression when they bring their babies, even if they are not our patients, even if we didn't deliver.

So many opportunities that falls through the crack and we are well positioned to identify those areas, those gaps, so that we can help modify these preventable causes that is harming moms and families.

That is so true.