I am excited to share that our efforts at University Medical Center to increase access to prenatal and obstetrics care in rural Pickens County was featured in March on PBS NewsHour.
For the segment, a PBS reporter and film crew spent a day in the county – at the home of a UMC-Carrollton patient and traveling with her to the clinic by city bus for her post-partum appointment with Dr. Catherine Lavender, who was also interviewed for the piece, and observing as Dr. Lavender conducted a telemedicine prenatal visit with another patient.
Dr. Lavender is a family medicine obstetrician who practices at UMC clinics in Carrollton and Northport, and she is a familiar face in Pickens County. She practiced full time in the county from 2003 to 2013, when she joined UMC. Even then, she continued to see patients one day a week in Pickens County. Now she spends that day at UMC-Carrollton.
Dr. Lavender is dedicated to ensuring that all women, particularly women living in rural communities, have access to prenatal care, and we share her dedication. Prenatal care means better outcomes for mother and baby. Babies of mothers who don’t get prenatal care are more likely to have low birthweight, a leading cause of infant mortality.
In many rural communities in Alabama, it’s often difficult to get prenatal care. One reason is the closure of rural hospitals. When rural hospitals struggle financially, labor and delivery units are often one of the first things to go because delivering babies is expensive. It’s hard to anticipate how long it might take to deliver a baby, potentially requiring around-the-clock availability of nurses, doctors, surgeons and anesthesiologists. But without hospital labor and delivery units, local obstetricians often leave town and rural women lose access to essential services.
At the College of Community Health Sciences, which operates UMC, we know that with additional training, family medicine physicians can provide needed prenatal an obstetrics care in rural areas that are not able to support ob-gyns. Through our yearlong Obstetrics Fellowship, family medicine physicians receive training in obstetrics care, including instrumental and operative obstetrics, ultrasound, Cesarean sections and dilatation and curettage.
This fellowship provides a model that we have used to increase access to prenatal and obstetrics care in rural Alabama communities. Like UMC-Carrollton, there are family medicine obstetricians at our UMC clinics in Demopolis and Fayette who are caring for expectant mothers and delivering their babies.
While it’s great to have our work at UMC-Carrollton recognized by PBS NewsHour, it’s a reflection of our efforts throughout our medical practice to provide access to care that all patients need and deserve.
The College of Community Health Sciences operates University Medical Center, the UA Student Health Center and Pharmacy, Brewer-Porch Children’s Center and Capstone Hospitalist Group.