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Sixteen years ago, Victoria Flanagan, R.N., M.S., and Michele Lauria, M.D., M.S., became increasingly alarmed as provider after provider closed vaginal-birth-after-a-caesarean (VBAC) programs across northern New England. Today, NNEPQIN consists of 43 organizations throughout New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine involved in perinatal care, including hospitals, state health departments, professional midwifery organizations, and the March of Dimes.

In 2001, a Samaritan Health Services (SHS) physician, Dr. Richard Wopat, recognized the need to improve birth outcomes of high-risk pregnant women in the region. In collaboration with various community and state partners, he started a pilot program in 2002 at Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center to ensure that the most vulnerable pregnant women had access to care and to screenings for special issues including medical, obstetrical, and psychosocial concerns. Today, the Samaritan Maternity Connection (MC) program is now implemented at all five of the SHS hospitals and the three county health departments.

Mothers and infants enrolled in the Strong Start birth centers model had $2,010 lower costs on average, 25 percent lower preterm birth rates and better birth outcomes than other comparable women enrolled in Medicaid.

Learning how leading hospitals and health systems are creating change and improving maternal health and mothers experience is an important way to move the country forward on national maternal safety and quality goals. Providence St. Joseph Health works as a system and regionally on continued obstetric quality improvement and has positive results to share.

Jay Bhatt, DO, AHA senior vice president and chief medical officer, will welcome Neel Shah, MD, MPP, a nationally recognized expert on the complex challenges facing hospitals and health systems as we commit to reducing risks for mothers and babies throughout pregnancy.

An innovative patient centered maternity care model leveraging technology and enabling clinicians to drive better pregnancy outcomes for women with chronic hypertension earned Penn Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Health System, a top award in the 2018 AHA Innovation Challenge. Adi Hirshberg, MD, co-founder Heart Safe Motherhood and Assistant Professor of Clinical Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Pennsylvania, will present this model engaging, monitoring, and managing high risk patients from hospital admission, through delivery and after they have returned home postpartum.

AHA hosted this webinar, the first in a series of webinars on improving maternal health and reducing maternal mortality, on November 13, 2018. Patricia M. Witcher, MSN, RNC-OB, clinical outcomes manager of Northside Hospital in Atlanta – a large provider of obstetric services with nearly 17,000 babies born at the hospital each year – discussed state and national quality initiatives, including the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, and shared maternal safety processes and practices.

Overview South Carolina suffers from a high rate of preterm birth, with 11.1 percent of women delivering prior to 37 weeks gestational age (according to the March of Dimes 2016 prematurity report card for South Carolina). If South Carolina were its own country, it would tie Madagascar for the 18th highest rate of preterm birth, higher than Bangladesh, Sudan and Iran. Infants born preterm are at risk for lifelong neurosensory and neurocognitive disabilities.

Overview In May 2014, the Ohio Governor’s Office of Health Transformation awarded MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland $395,170 in grant funding to reduce lengthy hospital stays and promote improved health outcomes for opiate-dependent mothers and their newborn babies. The funding was a part of a joint partnership between the Ohio Departments of Medicaid and Mental Health and Addiction Services called the Maternal Opiate Medical Support (MOMS) Project. The MOMS funding bolstered MetroHealth’s existing program to help mitigate the effects of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).

Overview Dartmouth–Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) is New Hampshire’s only academic medical center and is headquartered on a 225-acre campus in the heart of the Upper Connecticut River Valley, in Lebanon, N.H. DHMC is New Hampshire’s only Level I trauma center, one of only three in northern New England, and it includes New Hampshire’s only air ambulance service.

Overview Catholic Medical Center (CMC) is a 330-bed, not-forprofit, full-service acute care hospital in Manchester, N.H. The hospital offers medical-surgical care with more than 26 subspecialties, inpatient and outpatient services, diagnostic imaging and a 30-bed 24-hour emergency department (ED). Norris Cotton Cancer Center at CMC offers medical oncology and infusion services, and the New England Heart and Vascular Institute provides advanced cardiology and cardiac surgery services to the region.

Overview Services specific to perinatal mental health are sparse in our state, and those that exist are often difficult to access. In 2003, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore launched the Perinatal Depression Outreach Program (PDOP) to improve infant and maternal well-being through the identification and treatment of maternal mental health struggles.

Overview As the leading health care organization in Greater New Haven, Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) demonstrates its longtime commitment to families – especially mothers and children – by providing a variety of wide-ranging programs. Working within our diverse urban surroundings, YNHH partners with parents to support healthy children through initiatives both within the hospital and out in the community. These initiatives include:

Detroit’s infant mortality rate has been among the highest in the nation for years. In 2008, area hospitals and health systems joined together commissioning the Detroit Regional Infant Mortality Reduction Task Force to develop an action plan to help more babies celebrate their first birthdays. The result was the Women-Inspired Neighborhood (WIN) Network, originally named Sew Up the Safety Net for Women & Children.

Overview Mercy Health Fort Smith delivers approximately 2,500 babies annually. The hospital’s diverse patient population presents opportunities to minister in unique ways to families. In this organization’s region, drug addiction, domestic violence and post-partum depression are a significant struggle among pregnant women, so the hospital’s leaders decided to address those issues directly.

The Institute for Medicaid Innovation today released a new report that provides an overview of maternal behavioral health; risk factors, outcomes, and implications of maternal behavioral health disorders; barriers to obtaining behavioral health services; and opportunities for community organizations and Medicaid managed care to address maternal behavioral health.

In a commentary published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, several maternal health experts suggest four actions that “every hospital” can adopt to reduce maternal mortality.

These webinars member-only webinars are being held in collaboration with AONE and the AHA Physician Alliance.

American Academy of Pediatrics The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is an organization of 67,000 pediatricians committed to the optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.

p, ul { font-size: 16px; color: #555 } Federal Public Policy and Legislative Solutions for Improving Maternal HealthSupport for the Black Maternal Health Momnibus Act, S. 3424/H.R.