It is not exactly cold hard cash, but don’t poo poo it. Free diapers are enough of an incentive to encourage pregnant women to quit smoking and stay quit. Free diaper vouchers are a central component of the Baby & Me Tobacco Free program. The national smoking cessation program, which partners with local agencies, works…
A cross between a focus group and an improvement team, a patient and family advisory council (PFAC) is an effective way for a healthcare facility—be it a primary care practice or a hospital—to engage customers in improving the quality of care provided. The PFAC platform enables providers and patients to work side-by-side to discuss and…
Educating mothers about the benefits of breastfeeding before they enter the hospital increases the likelihood mothers will choose the beneficial feeding method. However, building bridges between care providers, community groups and hospitals can be surprisingly difficult. “Providing and reinforcing messages from prenatal through delivery and postpartum is essential to making sure mothers understand the critical…
In my role as Mother Chair for the New York State Breastfeeding Quality Improvement in Hospitals (BQIH) Collaborative, it has been my privilege to help participating hospital teams connect with and utilize their local parent partners. At times, however, hospital teams struggle with the why’s (why is this role important) and how’s (how can a parent,…
An aim statement is a clear, explicit summary of what your team hopes to achieve over a specific amount of time including the magnitude of change you will achieve. The aim statement guides your work by establishing what success looks like. Research shows teams who develop a good aim perform better. A good aim statement…
Andrea Thompson is a parent partner on the quality improvement team for the Kingwood Medical Center in Kingwood, TX, about 25 miles northeast of Houston. The hospital is participating in the Texas Ten Step Star Achiever Breastfeeding Learning Collaborative, which seeks to help hospitals improve their maternity care practices to better support mothers who choose to…
When Stephanie Birch, RNC, MPH, MS, was a new nurse in 1982, Alaska’s infant mortality rate was the highest in the nation. More than 30 years later, Alaska sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, with the lowest rate of infant deaths. While it wasn’t a quick fix, Birch says Alaska shows significant improvement…
About 80 percent of the women giving birth at CHRISTUS Hospital – St. Elizabeth in Beaumont, TX breastfeed with 50 percent exclusively breastfeeding during their stay. The exclusive rate is up 13 percent from just two years ago. The increase is a result of considerable efforts to retrain staff, eliminate formula giveaways, prioritize skin-to-skin bonding…
For women who smoke, quitting before or during pregnancy is one of the most powerful ways to improve birth outcomes and protect infants’ health. Not only known to damage the baby’s heart, lungs and brain and increase risk of birth defects, smoking during pregnancy is also closely associated with two leading causes of infant mortality: pre-term birth…
Carrying to full term helps safeguard against some of the greatest threats to infant health. Affecting about 1 in 10 babies born in the United States, preterm birth (i.e., birth before 37 weeks gestation) is a leading cause of infant mortality and a major contributor to long-term disability. Meanwhile, early-term infants (those born at 37 to 38…