Tara is a board-certified Neonatal Nurse Practitioner with more than 28 years of experience
in neonatal intensive care. She was a frontline worker in the growing opiate epidemic,
caring for the most innocent of its victims: Newborns suffering from opiate withdrawal
– Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS). Her passion to transform the healthcare
experience for them and their families led her to found Hushabye Nursery, an Arizona
non-profit dedicated to caring for opiate-exposed newborns in their first weeks of life. The
12-bed inpatient nursery opened its doors and its arms to these babies and their mothers
in November 2020.
Under Tara’s leadership as Executive Director, Hushabye Nursery has grown from an idea
to ‘save the babies’ in 2016, to a unique model of care for this underserved population that
focuses on the family unit, both prenatal and postnatal.
Recognized as an industry leader on NAS, Tara has presented several community events
on the topic. She received the 2021 Phoenix Business Journal Health Care Hero Award
for Nursing and a 12 News Miracle Makers Award in 2021. She holds a Master of Science
from Arizona State University and is a member of the National Association of Neonatal Nurses, the Academy of Neonatal Nurses, and the Neonatal Nurse Practitioners of AZ. Tara lives in Gilbert with her husband, two sons, and their dog.
Lunch Session: Hushabye Nursery, Supporting Opioid Dependent Pregnancies Through Collective Impact
Thursday, Sept. 22, │ 12:15 p.m.
Hushabye Nursery’s mission is to embrace substance-exposed infants and their caregivers with compassionate, evidence-based care that can change the course of their entire lives. In 2020, Hushabye Nursery opened its doors and began offering an innovative and trauma-informed medical care model created by nurse practitioners to treat infants experiencing Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) and provide intensive outpatient family services as part of pre and postnatal continuous care. Audience members will learn how Hushabye Nursery was developed, how the agency supports families, trends in opioids around Arizona, and how community agencies are pulling together to serve Arizona families struggling with opioid dependence differently.