Since her childhood, author Georgia Barnes questioned her self-worth and assumed her life was disposable. She struggled to find completeness. Knowing something was missing among the jigsaw pieces of her life, she didn’t realize she was hiding from herself. Shocked that she was living in denial, Barnes finds the courage to unlock the area of her life that was never allowed to surface. In Pregnancy Centers, she narrates her journey of healing that she found when she stopped running from her past. An honest and sincere account, Barnes pairs her personal story in conjunction with her experiences becoming a volunteer at a Michigan pregnancy center. As a birth mom, she shares her story and why she feels so strongly about supporting this ministry. In this memoir, she addresses the misconceptions often associated with pregnancy centers while at the same time encouraging others to become involved in a ministry suited to their own needs and interests. She offers a reminder that the journey through life can take many forms and chapters. Each person’s path neither defines them nor their future.

Whether you're a volunteer at a pregnancy center, a counselor, or simply a family member or friend who knows a pregnant woman in crisis, Pregnancy Crisis Intervention examines what a pregnancy crisis is and will help you know with confidence what to do and say when it matters most. After reading this book, you will understand: The challenges involved in a pregnancy-related crisis, How to guide someone's thinking with emotional awareness and accurate information, The principle of informed consent and the legal and medical justification for talking about abortion with honesty, The phases of crisis intervention from assessment to resolution, The skills and compassion needed to help both the woman and her baby. It also includes firsthand stories, further insights, and additional perspectives from women in crisis and leaders within the field of pregnancy crisis intervention. Book jacket.

The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines. Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice reviews and evaluates maternal and newborn care in the United States, the epidemiology of social and clinical risks in pregnancy and childbirth, birth settings research, and access to and choice of birth settings.

Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.

When Karen Patota first started the Christian social service organization A Baby's Breath in 2000, she had no idea of the impact it would have on her community. Now, seventeen years later, the service has expanded to five centers in the Greater Philadelphia area. Patota considers herself blessed to have had a part in founding an organization that helps and supports pregnant women in crisis. She is now sharing her long journey with you. By showing you exactly how she started and expanded A Baby's Breath, Patota gives you the perfect road map for organizing your own social service center. Patota discusses her spiritual motivations for creating her organization, the impact of modern culture on her clients, the compassionate approach to moral teaching, the early moments of A Baby's Breath, the unique model her organization uses, and lessons for creating a faith-based social organization of your own. Patota also shows how this endeavor shaped and enhanced her spiritual journey. This is God's plan for her life, and she's ecstatic that she can spread his love and wisdom to others. She wants you to feel the same kind of joy on your own service journey.

Abortion Practice is the only single-author medical textbook concerning abortion. It begins with a comprehensive view in its first chapter of The Epidemiologic Foundations of Abortion Practice. This chapter is a unique in the medical literature in presenting a public health view of pregnancy and abortion. Pregnancy is seen as a biocultural adaptation to the survival needs of the human species, and the management of pregnancy as a biocultural phenomenon that is determined by human culture. In many cultures, pregnancy is defined as a life-threatening illness, but in western culture, pregnancy is defined as normal. This reflects the role of women in western society and it affects the kinds of medical and surgical management of pregnancy that are available. Abortion alters the mortality statistics - the risk of death - for women who are pregnant. The remainder of the book provides a framework for modern abortion practice including evaluation of the patient, operative procedures and techniques, postoperative procedures, management of complications, diagnostic evaluation of pregnancy duration and fetal age, long-term risks of abortion, and program evaluation.

Prenatal care programs have proven effective in improving birth outcomes and preventing low birthweight. Yet over one-fourth of all pregnant women in the United States do not begin prenatal care in the first 3 months of pregnancy, and for some groupsâ€"such as black teenagersâ€"participation in prenatal care is declining. To find out why, the authors studied 30 prenatal care programs and analyzed surveys of mothers who did not seek prenatal care. This new book reports their findings and offers specific recommendations for improving the nation's maternity system and increasing the use of prenatal care programs.