Summary - Governor's Office Opioid Response Seminar Series (October ME#802/880)

Governor Mills Opioid Response Seminar Series Reconvenes Friday, October 2, 2026 from 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM ET

Join us for an important session as we explore The Maternal, Fetal, and Infant Mortality Review Panel. This seminar will delve into recent findings from the Panel’s review of all deaths of women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the first year postpartum between 2021 and 2023.

The Maternal, Fetal, and Infant Mortality Review Panel has reviewed all deaths of women in pregnancy, childbirth, and the first year postpartum between 2021 and 2023. Among those 26 deaths, the Panel determined that Substance Use Disorder (SUD)contributed to 14, or 54% of the deaths. The stories of the lives of the women who have died are vital to understanding how we can improve our systems. Our reviews themselves are confidential, but we created a Perinatal SUD Journey Map that draws from the actual deaths we’ve reviewed to create a composite story that demonstrates the types of barriers we see in our reviews and that can be shared publicly. The Journey Map was created in collaboration with the MFIMR Panel membership and those with lived experience in recovery, and we collaborated with three groups of women in treatment and recovery as part of community-based listening sessions. One goal of the listening sessions was to hear the groups’ reflections on the Journey Map as it relates to their own journeys in substance use, treatment, and recovery, and help identify how the story could have ended in recovery and thriving rather than death.

Speakers will include Liz Winterbauer, Evaluation Support for Maine's Maternal, Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Panel, Mariah Pfeiffer, Project Manager, ERASE-Maternal Mortality from the US CDC, Dr. Alane O'Connor, Director of perinatal medicine at MaineHealth Maine medical center, and Kristina Day, Peer Recovery Partner, MaineMom.

Gordon Smith, Maine Director of Opioid response, will moderate.

Liz Winterbauer provides evaluation support for Maine’s Maternal, Fetal, and Infant Mortality Review Panel, along with other perinatal quality improvement initiatives across the state. She also holds a part-time faculty position at the University of Vermont, where she teaches public health and epidemiology. Her background includes epidemiology, health services research, quality improvement, and evaluation, with prior work leading research on innovative public health service delivery models, contributing to chronic disease surveillance, and designing healthcare quality improvement initiatives across New England.

Mariah Pfeiffer is the project manager for the ERASE-Maternal Mortality from the US CDC that supports the work of Maine CDC’s Maternal, Fetal, and Infant Mortality Review (MFIMR) Panel. This grant funding supports the review of every maternal death in Maine, making strong recommendations to prevent future deaths, and bringing those recommendations to action for safer and healthier Maine families. Mariah has been honored to serve as a labor and delivery nurse for the last 15 years and currently works per-diem at Central Maine Medical Center. She holds a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Southern Maine, focusing on quality improvement and maternal child health research.

Dr. Alane O’Connor DNP is the Director of Perinatal Addiction Medicine at MaineHealth Maine Medical Center and served as the medical director of the Maine Maternal Opioid Misuse (MaineMOM) Initiative, a 5-year, $5 million federal grant to expand access to substance use treatment for pregnant and postpartum women. She has trained hundreds of resident physicians and fellows and is core faculty in Maine’s only addiction medicine fellowship. Dr. O’Connor has published more than a dozen peer-reviewed manuscripts on maternal and infant outcomes following treatment with medication for opioid use disorder during pregnancy as well as related postpartum healthcare utilization and health policy. She developed a partnership with Portland Fire Department’s Mobile Medical Outreach (MMO) team after recognizing that some of her most at-risk pregnant women were not accessing health care in traditional settings. Project Lifeline is a nationally innovative medical and community paramedicine program that delivers street medicine services to unhoused pregnant and postpartum women with substance use disorder who live in tents, shelters, vehicles, and on the street. Dr. O'Connor lectures regionally and nationally on substance use disorder to a variety of audiences including medical providers, the child welfare system, the correctional system and judiciary, as well as law enforcement. She is a member of the Maine Maternal Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Panel and co-chairs Maine’s Opioid Response Clinical Advisory Committee which advises the state’s opioid response director on clinical and public policy issues.

Kristina Day is a 39-year-old mother of two who has transformed two decades of darkness and shame into a life of purpose and advocacy. After using substances during both pregnancies and the postpartum period with her now nine-year-old daughter, Kristina began receiving services through MaineMOM in 2023 while six months pregnant with her son—an experience that changed the trajectory of both her personal and professional life. Today, she has been a Peer Recovery Partner with MaineMOM for almost two years and will graduate with her Masters in Social Work in 2027. Drawing on both her education and lived experience, Kristina is passionate about helping other mothers affected by substance use disorder find healing, courage, and freedom from shame.