have been neglected. We try to do out-
reach and find women as soon into their
pregnancy as we can to bring them into
this comprehensive, perinatal-care pro-
gram. We give them access to high-qual-
ity OB-GYN services, our providers are
in the hospital, attending to the delivery.
(We follow up) with well-baby visits and
postpartum visits.
We have known for a long time that
women of color have babies that are
twice as likely to die than babies of other
ethnic groups. … No one stopped to say,
“Well, how are we going to stop that?”
For example, women of color don’t ab-
sorb (sunshine) the same way as some-
one who’s not black; they’re more likely
to have a vitamin D deficiency. So you
compensate by giving them a bottle of
vitamin D — (which costs) like a couple
dollars — and then they drink it. If they
go untreated, that increases the likeli-
hood the baby will be premature or low
birth weight. Giving them vitamin D and
watching them drink it is actually an ef-
fective intervention for increasing the
likelihood they’ll take the baby to term
and the baby w ill have healthy birth
weight. It’s pretty basic, right?
The cervical length at 23 weeks is
predictive of prematurity and low birth
weight. The best way to check that is do
an ultrasound and see how long the cer-
vix is. There is no 23-week ultrasound.
Medi-Cal won’t pay for it. So we’ve writ-
ten grants to bring in dollars to pay for
those ultrasounds.
WellSpace runs suicide-prevention
crisis lines, started in the 1950s — tell
me about any changes or advance-
ments in that program.
We serve over 50 counties in California.
We have a primary focus in the northern
counties, but we’re the rollover for many
southern counties. We take about 40,000
calls a year; 26 percent of them are con-
Live:
On TV or Online
October 4–6
sidered to be highly lethal … which trig-
gers a trace. We call law enforcement
and say, “Trace the last call we got, and
then send out a welfare check.” We have
this incredible team that goes into that
space with people between their life and
death, and typically results in a favor-
able (outcome). We’ve tried to be more
proactive. I should mention many of the
calls we receive are third-party calls. If
you’re worried about a friend, you can
call the suicide hotline, and we’ll call
(your friend). It’s definitely easier for us
to call professionally, than for a friend
to know what to do, and we would rather
help people regret doing something than
not doing something.
In terms of the passivity of a suicide
hotline, we’ve tried to f lip that so one of
the things we’ve done is try to support
the hospitals in the region. Every year,
in Sacramento County alone, about 800
people are discharged from the emer-
gency room after being treated for in-
Amy Vidra, “Golden”
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October 2019 | comstocksmag.com
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