As Unplanned Pregnancy Rates Drop, Births Improve
Simply put, fewer unplanned pregnancies means more healthy moms and babies. It’s a fact that has ignited efforts to address unplanned pregnancies as a strategy to improve infant mortality rates.
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Building Resiliency in Teen Moms Can Improve Breastfeeding and Save Babies
How do I find time to breastfeed my baby at school? What will my friends think if they see me breastfeeding? Shouldn’t my mom just watch my baby? She knows more than me anyway. We can only begin to imagine how difficult breastfeeding must seem to mothers who are in the midst of their adolescence….
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Empowering Parents to Improve Early Childhood Systems
Parents are their children’s best advocates. They’re also those who navigate the systems we seek to improve. When we empower parents to partner with us, we can best understand their needs and respond with practical and powerful solutions. Nicole Hopkins, a New Jersey team lead for the NICHQ-led Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Collaborative Improvement and…
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Recruiting Physician Champions for Improvement Projects
Having a physician champion on board can be an important benefit for clinically-based improvement teams. The physician champion plays a crucial role when it comes time to make the case for other physicians to support an improvement idea. They also understand the ins and outs of the processes already in place. Wondering where to start…
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We Did it for the Babies: A Story of Collective Impact
Creating sustainable changes to improve infant feeding practices means sparking a social movement. It means generating a collective response to a complicated question: what is the healthiest way to feed our newborns?
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Social-Emotional Health is Often Invisible, But It Still Needs Support
In Bountiful, Utah, on Dec. 1, 2016, a young boy fired a gun into a classroom full of middle school science students. No one was physically injured, but there were other kinds of injuries. Aliza, the daughter of NICHQ Project Director Colleen Murphy, MSMOB, was in that classroom. And the shooter was one of Aliza’s…
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Helping Health Plans Improve Asthma Outcomes
When provided with proper treatment, educational materials and environmental management, children diagnosed with asthma can lead full and healthy lives
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Starting School Prepared Should Be a Right, Not a Privilege
In theory, a child’s very first day of school is their first fresh start. It happens before anyone has proved better in the classroom, on the soccer field or in the hallways. It’s anyone’s game and every child has a shot at success, an equal chance to learn, make friends and thrive. It certainly sounds…
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Use Evaluation to Guide PDSAs Rather Than Derail Them
A key to making sure that teams are testing changes on the road to improvement is to avoid getting stuck mistaking an evaluation activity for a test of change. This mistake falls under a common pitfall of mistaking a task for a test. That isn’t to say that you should avoid evaluation activities at all costs. Evaluation…
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Bedsharing, Breastfeeding and Babies Dying: A Conversation Worth Having
Bedsharing can lead to longer breastfeeding duration. It also leads to more infant deaths. These opposing facts represent a major dilemma for those working to improve infant health. It becomes even trickier when we dive a little deeper. Breastfeeding also correlates with lower sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) rates, the most common cause of post-neonatal…