By Jim Talamonti | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – A doctor running for Congress in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District says the first step to improving the state’s Department of Public Health would be to remove Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

The Illinois Department of Public Health’s Maternal Mortality Data Report released last week found that 91% of pregnancy-related deaths were potentially preventable and that Black women were far more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related conditions.

According to the press release announcing the data, the report also reinforced Pritzker’s Birth Equity Blueprint. In the third paragraph of the news release, below “key points for media,” was the finding that substance use disorder was by far the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths across Illinois in 2021 and 2022.

IDPH uses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definition for pregnancy-related death as “the death of a woman during pregnancy or within one year of the end of a pregnancy from a pregnancy complication, a chain of events initiated by pregnancy, or the aggravation of an unrelated condition by the physiologic effects of pregnancy.”

According to IDPH’s Maternal Mortality Data Report, there were 27 pregnancy-related deaths in Illinois caused by substance use disorder over the two-year period from 2021 to 2022, six more than the next two causes combined. Thrombotic embolism (blood clot) followed with eleven deaths and COVID-19 was next with ten.

Dr. Kim Ladien is a Chicago psychiatrist and Republican U.S. House candidate in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District. The seat is currently held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, who has also filed as a candidate for mayor of Chicago in 2027.

Ladien said there is a solution to pregnancy-related mortality in Illinois.

“By making sure that anybody that is getting a subsidy before they have a child is also getting drug screened before they have a child,” Ladien told The Center Square.

Ladien proposed that teen mothers work as daycare assistants to develop parenting skills and have a safe place for their children.

“That way we can monitor that they’re not using drugs before or after birth, and that’s a major way of breaking that cycle permanently. And, by the way, two-parent families are better than one-parent families. That’s been the truth for thousands of years,” Ladien said.

Ladien said there are several reforms he would like to see at IDPH.

“Removing J.B. is Step One. Step Two is having what I call a one-stop case management system, which is inpatient-outpatient follow-up on all patients,” Ladien said.

According to Ladien, preventive medicine is Job One.

“In terms of not only keeping healthy but staying off drugs and alcohol and people in jobs showing up and actually doing something,” Ladien explained.