A new federally funded study published by the American Medical Association finds that removing isolated marijuana use as a reason to order urine drug screenings during pregnancy “was associated with improved racial parity in testing and reporting” of test results to child protective services, “with no evidence of decreased identification of non prescribed, non cannabis substances” and “no significant association between the intervention and any measured neonatal outcomes.”
The report, published on Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open, notes that urine drug screenings are often used during pregnancy to guide prenatal care. And some states require that positive results for federally illegal substances be reported to child protective services.
Authors from Washington University in St. Louis, however, suggest that the harms of that practice sometimes outweigh the benefits. Eliminating marijuana as a reason to order drug screening, they wrote, better protects families and promotes parity by “reduc[ing] racial bias in urine drug screening and reporting to child protective services without impacting the identification of clinically meaningful substance use.”
The report notes that “Black patients are significantly more likely than their White counterparts to undergo peripartum urine drug screening (UDS) and subsequent reporting to child protective services (CPS).”
Parents’ fear of a CPS report and possible loss of custody of a newborn child can get in the way of needed care, which can further exacerbate racial disparities in health.
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