Preventing Crack Babies: Different Approaches of Prevention

Crack-cocaine use among pregnant women is of major social and public health concern for many reasons including the birth of "crack babies" and its relations to HIV infection. Many programs exist that focus on the rehabilitation of women and mothers who use cocaine. We use deterministic and stochastic approaches to model the effectiveness of these programs. The focus will be on populations of women (often commercial sex workers) who are encouraged or forced to use drugs by drug dealers, pimps or both. The impact of drug rehabilitation and other treatment programs among particular groups is explored as well as the role of drug enforcement on the dynamics of this system. In particular, the role of pimp's pressure on women to use drugs, the inability of drug users to quit due to addiction, and the relapse among those in rehabilitation programs are explored. The effect of longer jail terms for drug dealers and pimps is discussed in the context of the model and data available.