Too many aspects of well-woman health, reproduction, pregnancy, birth, parenting, and caregiving are absent from available data, leaving us unable to identify problems and design targeted interventions.
By conducting, collecting, and sharing research in these areas, Maternal Spotlight aims to enable researchers, institutions, and policymakers to create meaningful changes to the maternal experience.
Furthermore, disseminating our findings can help women, birth parents, caregivers, and their support systems empower themselves for better experiences and improved health outcomes.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) defines quality health care “as doing the right thing for the right patient, at the right time, in the right way to achieve the best possible results.”
We consider this carefully in our quality of maternal care projects through quantitative & qualitative approaches. At the 2019 American Public Health Association Annual Conference we presented results from our study examining how often women attend the recommended postpartum follow-up visit within 60 days of an inpatient delivery.
Our analyses not only illustrated opportunities to examine barriers to follow-up care, but also further highlighted how valuable it is to connect mothers to both medical and social supports in the first year after childbirth.
Our study, “Identifying Significant Data Gaps and Implications For Creating Meaningful Quality Improvement” received the “Highest Scoring Abstract” award at the 2018 American Public Health Association Annual Meeting. In our review of existing quality measures and survey data, we found only one national quality measure addresses the postpartum period, leaving performance on longer-term outcomes for mothers largely unknown. As this landscape is evolving we are continuing to examine new guidelines, policies, and proposed metrics which can improve maternal outcomes.
Through our partnerships with the Long Island Doula Association and The Nesting Place, we will investigate the effects of birth and postpartum supports on maternal and child outcomes.