ABOUT THE LEARNING SESSION

This talk with describe what is known about prenatal cannabis use trends and health consequences using data from Kaiser Permanente Northern California’s large integrated healthcare delivery system. We will discuss why pregnant individuals use cannabis and describe disparities in prenatal cannabis use and related outcomes. We will end with a discussion about the potential harms of punitive policies that penalize or criminalize prenatal substance use.

The Presenter: Kelly C. Young-Wolff, PhD, MPH is a licensed clinical psychologist and research scientist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco; Adjunct Lecturer in Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine; and Professor, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine.

Dr. Young-Wolff’s research focuses on substance use, focusing specifically on cannabis use among pregnant persons and on the impact of changes in local, state, and national policy. Her research interests also include investigating how stress and trauma, genetic factors, and health-related policies shape disparities in the onset and course of drug and alcohol abuse, tobacco use, and psychiatric disorders. She is also interested in conducting research to inform the development of effective behavioral interventions for complex patients with multiple co-occurring psychiatric and addictive disorders.

She is the chapter lead on an upcoming U.S. Surgeon General report related to tobacco and serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s ad hoc committee on the public health consequences of changes in cannabis policy. Dr. Young-Wolff’s portfolio also includes studies of intimate partner violence and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), for which the California Surgeon General invited her to be a member of the ACEs Aware Evaluation and Evidence Advisory Committee.

Dr. Young-Wolff has received four R01 grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse as well as grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program. She was selected for the 2022 Young Professional Award by the Maternal and Child Health Section of the American Public Health Association.

Dr. Young-Wolff received her BA in psychology and anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and her MPH and doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Southern California. She completed her NIDA-funded predoctoral fellowship at Yale University in the Department of Psychiatry and her NHLBI-funded postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in the Stanford School of Medicine.

About the webinar: This webinar is planned and hosted by the New England Prevention Technology Transfer Center, a program funded through cooperative agreement from SAMHSA. This webinar has been pre-approved by the Maine Prevention Certification Board, an IC&RC member board, for 1 contact hour. Participants who complete this webinar will receive a certificate of completion for 1 contact hour. For questions about this webinar, please contact [email protected].