The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says nationally about one-third of pregnant women have been vaccinated.
That number regionally, said Linda Barnhart, an OB-GYN at UPMC Northwest, is closer to 20%.
“Collectively, as a system,” Barnhart said, “the CDC recommends vaccination for women who are pregnant, trying to become pregnant or recently pregnant and nursing.” The hospital “follows those guidelines.”
“They don’t know what it will do to them, or to their babies, they worry about what’s in it,” she said.
Much of the concern, she said, can be traced to misinformation. What’s shared on social media can sound impressive, but Barnhart warns against getting health care advice from Facebook. “You or I can go on there and post anything we want. That doesn’t make it true.”
Combating misinformation, Barnhart said, “feels like an uphill battle a lot of the time.”
For Barnhart, it’s important that patients understand the CDC recommends a flu vaccine for pregnant women as well, and that’s been recommended for years.
Between the politics, the social pressures and the element of personal choice, Barnhart said, pregnant women are in a tough spot to make a solid decision.
“As physicians,” she said, regardless of their recommendations, “we try to leave those decisions up to you,” but with all the information.
“You don’t even have to ask here for science-based information on the vaccine,” Barnhart said. If patients have questions, the office has literature based in the same science the physicians there use to recommend care.
She said the risks for pregnant women and their babies from the virus is known and proven.
They’re more likely, according to Barnhart, to wind up in an intensive care unit, on a ventilator or hospitalized for complications.
“The bottom line for us is healthy mom, healthy baby,” she said. If the mother is in an ICU with a lowered oxygen rate, “that’s not healthy for anyone.”
While Barnhart said she understands the concerns patients raise over the newness of the vaccine, she always reminds them that “over the years, recommendations have changed, and the information” on the COVID-19 vaccine “evolves every day.”
She stressed “the most current information is disseminated quickly” within the medical community, and doctors are always updating their recommendations based on it.
The push to bring up that percentage of pregnant women from 20% in the Oil Region vaccinated continues. There’s even a new poster campaign featuring pregnant UPMC physicians and leaders getting vaccinated.
“We just want to show, you know, we’re doing it ourselves, and we recommend you do as well,” Barnhart said.
