Setting the Scene
As she sat in her car in the clinic parking lot, she started to feel sick to her stomach. Her hands gripped the steering wheel, her heart picked up pace, and she thought to herself, ‘I don’t want them to think I am a bad mother. I don’t want to lose my baby.” Pregnant, exhausted, scared, and struggling with substance use disorder, this mother knew she needed help, but past experiences had taught her that she would probably be met with judgement, stigma, and professionals acting like she had no hope for being a good mother. She has started to believe them to some extent. What she didn’t know at the time was that just behind those clinic doors, a different kind of care was waiting, that a provider who understands her complex needs and is committed to getting her comprehensive support will not let her and her baby fall through the cracks.
The difference in this story is the work of Dr. Russell Suda and the SUN Project (Substance Use Network). The SUN Project is a collaborative model that transforms what it means for pregnant women with substance use disorder to seek care. Instead of punishment and shame, Dr. Suda and his team meet patients with compassion and comprehensive services to provide a safety net of support for the mother and her baby:
“We will not stigmatize you. We will not talk down to you. We will not try to take your baby from you. We want you and your baby to stay together. That’s a success for us,” Dr. Suda explains. This type of instrumental work earned Dr. Suda the 2025 Family Champion Award for Generational Impact from the Institute for Family. This initiative creates long-term, generational benefits for families in North Carolina.
The Crisis of Substance Use Disorder
The story presented earlier, while fictional, is not unique. The crisis of substance use disorder (SUD) that Dr. Suda is tackling is a real, urgent issue. According to th e CDC, 7 percent of women reported using prescription opioid pain relievers during pregnancy in 2019, with one in five of those individual reporting misuse. From 2010 to 2017, opioid-related diagnoses documented at delivery increased by 131 percent. In North Carolina, the problem is just as severe. UNC explains that the state’s neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) rate reached 9.4 per 1,000 newborns in 2016, surpassing the national rate of 7.0. March of Dimes defines NAS as “a group of conditions caused when a baby withdraws from certain drugs they were exposed to in the womb, most often opioids.”
The National Institute on Drug Abuse underscores the risk capturing how babies exposed in utero may face stillbirth, NAS, and lifelong challenges like developmental delays and learning disabilities. As March of Dim es notes, stigma leads to women being “pushed aside,” seen as failures rather than humans living in a greater context and fighting an illness. The SUN Project, launched under The Suda I nstitute in partnership with the Cabarrus Health Alliance, was established under the belief in collaboration to reduce this stigma and make mothers feel like they matter. Women receive prenatal care from an OB/GYN trained in addiction, clinical social work and peer support services, ultrasounds, medication-assisted treatment, mental health services, dental, newborn care, and, when appropriate, can be referred to services like WIC. Dr. Suda explains, “The teamwork is absolutely immense. Everybody is essential in making this (comprehensive) care happen for patients.”
This standout model didn’t invent itself over night. In fact, Dr. Suda mentions that, at one point, he was disheartened and considered giving up. That is until a conversation at a local IHOP in 2018 with Ann Benfield that changed everything. Benfield is the CEO of the Cabarrus Partnership for Children which, at the time of her meeting with Dr. Suda, oversaw eight programs pertinent to Perinatal Care. She urged him to apply for support from the Hayes Family Foundation, where they ultimately were able to obtain the financial push they needed for the SUN Project to materialize. That conversation served as a turning point, allowing help for mothers struggling with substance use disorder to propel forward through the collaborative, person-centered model.
Now, the SUN Project works every day to change narratives around substance use disorders in pregnant women in North Carolina. Instead of siloed systems, The SUN Project unites many entities that are crucial players in lifting mothers out of their situations:
“I went to family medicine, pediatrics, the hospitals. I even went to law enforcement and the attorneys who represented these mothers. We got so much cooperation from the district judges, from the family court judges, from the attorneys. We even got referrals from them saying they would mitigate sentences if these patients would come over and be seen by us,” Dr. Suda exclaimed.
Now, with partnerships across multiple sectors, they have a team of individuals, addressing multiple dimensions of well-being that can work together towards creating better conditions for mothers with SUD:
“We have 14 institutions signed on to a meeting and we present charts on patients, and everybody gets a chance to say, oh, I can do this for the patient,’ or, ‘Call me, I can link this patient up over here and try to assist with finding them housing.’ We even have a probation officer on there, because so many are in probation so they should be part of building solutions.”
By bringing together voices from healthcare to criminal justice, the project combines once fragmented services together to allow mothers and babies to thrive.
Building Trust and Breaking Stigma
The SUN Project challenges one of the most significant barriers for pregnant women struggling with SUD: stigma. Studies show that pregnant women with SUD are often too fearful of CPS involvement or too ashamed to seek care. The Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health speaks to how more than 30 percent also struggle with co-occurring mental health conditions like depression, which can drive substance use as a coping mechanism. Dr. Suda and the team recognize the multitude of factors that contribute to substance use and focus on building a strong social and support network for these mothers that can sustain healthy practices beyond pregnancy.
“When you surround these mothers with all the resources that she needs and assure her that she’s in a safe environment, you can see a woman’s life turn on a dime towards recovery,” Suda explains. Dr. Suda adds, “Of 28 women we managed through the first year after delivery, 26 were still with their baby and loving their baby. That is off the charts because this is a population that usually is high risk for losing their babies to systems.” This data shows that the project is not simply great in theory; it is helping a population beat odds that are heavily stacked against them due to a number of social and behavioral factors.
The Generational Impact
The ripple effects of Dr. Suda’s work extend beyond a year, though. Research from Meaulewaeter et al. shows that a mother’s SUD increases adverse childhood experiences, fueling cycles of trauma and substance use in the next generation. However, this work truly switches the trajectory for the future generations of families, starting with the mother. “Substance use is a generationally indexed problem,” Dr. Suda stated. He added, “We’ve got to get women out of the opioid pandemic. Not that men don’t count, but women are the center of the family and the home life. And if we don’t bring women back, families will fall through the cracks.” These children are the greatest motivators for that. “These babies bring the light on in the mothers’ eyes. There’s hope…that aby is like light years ahead of any other reason to change her life,” Dr. Suda illustrates.
Mothers who have gone through the program echo this. One shared, “My biggest source of motivation is my children.” Another said, “My son deserves somebody who can provide for him, who loves him, who puts 100 percent of her attentions towards him. I vowed to do that when I was given the chance. When somebody actually recognized I could be that, I wasn’t going to take it for granted.”
Dr. Suda’s initiative has given mothers the ability to not only reclaim their lives and their paths, but rewrite the future for their children by giving them safe, loving environments that they might not have had without participation in the SUN Project; cycles of trauma have been mitigated and replaced with connection and support.
Hope for the Future
Dr. Suda is optimistic for the future of the SUN Project and for mothers in North Carolina. He elaborates in saying, “What gives me hope is that those numbers…26 women with their babies at year one, really in a great state of recovery, loving these babies. I mean, against outrageous circumstances, here they are. My hope comes from putting this kind of collaborative network of stakeholder model for other counties in North Carolina. I really see this model as being hopeful for mothers and babies to tackle the issue of substance use in our state.”
For women once sitting in cars outside clinics, too afraid of what type of greeting waited for them on the other side of the doors, Dr. Suda’s hope is transformative and instrumental. As the SUN Project expands across North Carolina, it offers a blueprint for how communities can come together to support mothers, break cycles of trauma, and build healthier futures for families.
Through persistence, innovation, and collaboration, Dee Hunt has transformed the way foster care is imagined in her county and embodies what it means to make your job into your purpose. Through the Lighthouse Project, she is ensuring that children in Rutherford County, and hopefully eventually across all other 99 counties in North Carolina, have not only a safe place to reside, but dignity and care.
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