2025 Year in Review
Published Jan 8, 2026
As we reflect back on 2025 and look ahead toward 2026 activities, the team at the Missouri Perinatal Quality Collaborative celebrates the successes, strong collegial relationships and growth in the momentum to improve health outcomes for moms and babies in our state. Highlights from 2025 include the launch of the Ask Me 5 campaign, the release of a comprehensive 12-month postpartum care guidance, our first-ever maternal and infant symposium, engaging with patient and family partners, and contributing to the development of a draft state maternal health plan.
Our hospital implementation team continued their work with 54 of Missouri’s 57 birthing hospitals by providing monthly webinars with subject matter experts, supporting labor and delivery teams with coaching calls, and recognizing the progress of hospitals that are enrolled in our five quality improvement collaboratives. Stipends were provided to support implementation of screening and referrals for substance use disorder for hospital birth units in the Maternal-Infant Dyad quality improvement collaborative. Enhancements to the MO PQC Dashboards were added to provide hospital and peer benchmarking capability and hospital education was given to support use of the dashboard data to drive improvement. In 2026, we look forward to launching a second infant-focused collaborative, which will focus on recognition and management of neonatal encephalopathy.
In the course of 2025, MO PQC has expanded to include two new team members, Lindsey VonDras, PQC care coordination manager, and Katie Burch, PQC specialist. Lindsey is leading efforts to strengthen care coordination and enhance referral pathways for maternal-infant dyads affected by substance use disorders through the integration of maternal peer support. Coming from a background in neonatal nursing, Katie works with the MO PQC participating hospitals to support their implementation of patient safety bundles to improve care for moms and babies.
This year, MO PQC continued serving as a state and regional convener — connecting with clinicians, community leaders, patients and health care partners across the state through in-person and virtual meetings. In the spring, we co-hosted the Maternal and Infant Health Convening, where attendees had the opportunity to hear from experts, gather resources from state partners and share their own insights on how to change Missouri’s birth story. The convening also provided the opportunity to introduce the Ask Me 5 initiative to a statewide audience. Developed in tandem with maternal health experts and patients with lived experience, Ask Me 5 seeks to improve maternal health outcomes during pregnancy and the postpartum period by promoting five essential health questions directly linked to maternal mortality in Missouri. During the presentation, MO PQC shared videos about the initiative as well as the website, AskMe5.org, that provides free resources.
MO PQC hosted the Maternal SUD and NAS Summit, which provided a collaborative forum for clinical practitioners and researchers as well as individuals with lived experience to advance their knowledge and resources. Presenters from the medical field shared their evidence-based practices for treating SUD and NAS, while peer support specialists shared their journeys through substance use and recovery, offering insights on how to better serve moms and families with SUD.
Another important 2025 milestone was MO PQC’s first-ever Maternal and Infant Symposium, which brought together more than 170 passionate professionals, advocates and community leaders for three days of learning, collaboration and bold ideas. Attendees participated in skill-building workshops on using the Ask Me 5 framework and integrating community health workers in clinics and listened to breakout sessions on topics like medical home models for obstetric care, doulas working in clinical settings and family-centered care in NICU settings.
One of MO PQC’s proudest accomplishments in 2025 was the development and release of The One-Year Postpartum Pathway. This comprehensive report is the product of 18 months of collaboration and research by the Missouri Optimizing Postpartum Care Task Force. The report recognizes common barriers to postpartum care in Missouri and offers evidence-based recommendations for maternal health care from pregnancy through the first 12 months postpartum, including care coordination, patient education and engagement, addressing nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes, perinatal mental health, well-woman care and transition to primary care, and management of chronic conditions. To implement the recommendations outlined in the report, the task force aims to disseminate its findings to a wide range of providers that serve pregnant and postpartum people. Current methods of dissemination include aligning recommendations with the developing state maternal health plan and leaning in to support pilot programs that further study and evaluate the impact of the task force’s recommendations.
As always, MO PQC would like to recognize the support and guidance of its advisory group, the Maternal-Child Learning and Action Network — a diverse body of subject matter experts representative of clinical professionals, state agencies and associations, community-based organizations and patient family partners. A subset of the MC LAN also served as the new Missouri Maternal Health Task Force and successfully submitted the first draft of a five-year maternal health strategic plan, which addresses the medical, behavioral and social/structural drivers contributing to poor maternal health outcomes in our state. In 2026, the task force looks forward to receiving public feedback on the plan and further refining the measures and initiatives for improving maternal health.
MO PQC would like to recognize our national and state partners that are critical to supporting the work of reducing severe maternal and infant morbidity and mortality.
As we turn our attention to 2026, we remain committed to achieving the mission of “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, Healthy MO,” and we invite you to join us in this work. You can stay up to date by reading our weekly newsletter, the PQC Pulse, and following our social media channels.