Impact

We get results. Period.

NICHQ creates transformative change in children’s health quality. From our continued efforts, more children have better access to care, better coordinated services across systems and sectors—schools, community-based organizations, primary care—and better designed solutions by involving families in the change process. Here are just some of the ways we’ve made an impact.

5 percent decrease in national infant mortality rates
Nearly 11,000 more children with sickle cell disease have access to quality care
20,000 more children are receiving comprehensive wellness assessments each year in Massachusetts
95% of children confirmed with hearing loss are referred for early intervention
218,000 more breastfed infants nationwide
74 Texas hospitals practicing better breastfeeding habits

Read Our Case Studies

Accelerating Action and Gaining Traction: ECCS Case Studies 

In communities and states across the country, there is a growing movement to develop coordinated, effective, and high-quality systems to support all parents and give all young children an optimal start. ECCS CoIIN is one of these systems-building initiatives.

As part of the work, ECCS CoIIN produced the following case studies: Applying a System Maturity Framework to Understand Progress and Success; Engage and Empower Families at all Levels of Leadership; Enhancing and Developing Community Platforms to Promote the Developmental Health of Young Children; Improving Systems Performance Measurement; Policies to Solidify, Institutionalize, and Formalize Advancements for Sustainability; States and Communities Working Together: Partnerships for Impact

Efforts to Address Preterm Birth Rates

NICHQ worked with Kansas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, and Oklahoma to identify policies, structures, and other contextual factors that may have impacted preterm birth rates in each state. Each of the four selected states participated in the 2013-2017 phase of the Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network to Reduce Infant Mortality (IM CoIIN) and elected to address preterm births as one of their priority areas.

New York State Engages Partners to Improve Breastfeeding Outcomes

The Bureau of Community Chronic Disease Prevention at the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH) worked with NICHQ to develop and lead hospitals in a quality improvement initiative to increase exclusive breastfeeding rates.

Better Breastfeeding for Healthier Moms and Babies

NICHQ partnered with the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program to support 74 hospital-based teams in using quality improvement methodology to increase overall and exclusive breastfeeding rates.

Fostering Better Outcomes for Treating Sickle Cell Disease

NICHQ’s efforts as the National Coordinating Center (NCC) marked the first time in U.S. history that improvements in SCD care were tackled on a large, regional and national scale.

Reducing Infant Mortality Rates Across the Country

Between 2013 and 2017, the Health Resources and Services Administration Maternal and Child Health Bureau (HRSA MCHB) engaged NICHQ in what became a nationwide effort to reduce infant mortality rates in the U.S. Had these rates remained unchanged, over 23,000 babies would continue to die annually.

What People Say

For me, NICHQ is uniquely positioned to support complex, system-based efforts to improve child health and healthcare, locally and on a national scale. NICHQ helped my teams succeed by supporting collaboration, information management, and continuous learning. With NICHQ's help, the whole of our work was much greater than the sum of each of our individual efforts!

Bill Adams, MD

NICHQ’s role in coordinating these grantees working on improving sickle cell care and making an agenda that at least tries to push for improved care for all of these patients is very important. The role has been not been very well-served and NICHQ, in my mind, has the experience and staff expertise to bring to sickle cell disease the sort of rigor in methods development and analysis of outcomes to move the bar of caring for people with sickle cell disease several notches up.

Kwaku Ohene-Frempong, MD-Healthcare Leader

In over 21 years of caring for my son with complex congenital heart defects plus my 20 years working in healthcare quality improvement and my 6 plus years as a patient advocate, I've never known anyone to embrace closing the gaps between patients and healthcare institutions or doctors, as much as the people from NICHQ.

Tami Rich-Parent Partner

Once I became accustomed to the QI process it opened my eyes to the possibilities for how we can grow our work moving forward. Working with NICHQ I learned that sometimes you need to take a step back and think small in order to have a big impact.

Kira Baldonado-Project Partner

I have been impressed to see the policy changes across our state take hold, moving toward a new care standard and I am optimistic about the changes which are continuing throughout our state.

Pamela Berens, MD-Project Faculty