Looking Back on 2024, Looking Ahead to 2025

Published Feb 6, 2025

Alison Williams, DNP, MBA-HCM, CPHQ, LSSGB
Vice President of Clinical Quality Improvement
Missouri Hospital Association

Looking back on 2024, the Missouri Perinatal Quality Collaborative made significant progress in achieving our mission of “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, Healthy MO.”  Our year began by onboarding five new team members, increasing our team total to 10. The response from Missouri birthing hospitals was strong — 53 Missouri hospitals have enrolled in five quality improvement collaboratives to date. Our work continued with monthly webinars and in-person events that focused on integrating trauma-informed care in health care settings, engaging with community members in four rural towns about maternal care, and strategies for providers to support moms with substance use disorders. Whether it was in-person events and trainings (568 attendees) or online education (600+ participants), the MO PQC reached a wide audience with engaging speakers and informative programming.

We also launched our new website in April (mopqc.org), and published 12 evidence-based clinical and operational workbooks, a guide on integrating doula care into clinical settings, a guide on fourth trimester screenings, and monthly blog posts from maternal and infant health experts. With a strong focus on being data-driven, we launched the MO PQC data dashboards. Developed in collaboration with the Hospital Industry Data Institute, the dashboards allow Missouri hospitals to view their maternal health data, review patient-level trends, and leverage their data to reduce disparities and variations in care and improve health outcomes. In our efforts to include patient voices in maternal health care, MO PQC onboarded seven patient family partners and provided training opportunities to help them feel prepared to share their feedback and experiences. Check out our 2024 Progress Report to see more of our accomplishments.

Looking ahead to 2025, MO PQC is continuing its efforts to support maternal and infant quality improvement projects and align efforts across the state. We’ll continue providing educational opportunities and implementation support, while also facilitating and leading innovative initiatives. Once again, we are co-sponsoring the Maternal and Infant Health Convening, where community voices, health care professionals and state agencies will gather to address current challenges, share solutions and build connections across the state. A clinical implementation and research focused meeting also is in the works for later 2025. Key focuses for MO PQC include strengthening rural maternal-infant health systems, increasing integration of trauma-informed care for patients and workforce, increasing clinical-community integration, and supporting patient safety bundle implementation for moms and babies.

Another important 2025 milestone will be the release of a postpartum pathways report from MO PQC’s Optimizing Postpartum Care Task Force. Comprised of physicians, nurses, behavioral and mental health specialists, community partners, doulas and patients with lived experience, the task force has been strategizing and writing their report over a 16-month period. The report recognizes common barriers to postpartum care in Missouri and offers evidence-based recommendations for maternal health care during the first 12 months postpartum, including care coordination, patient education and engagement, addressing social drivers of health, perinatal mental health, well-woman care and transition to primary care, management of chronic conditions, and infant health.

The progress made this past year would not have been possible without the statewide engagement of our advisory group, the Maternal-Child Learning and Action Network. This body of diverse subject matter experts and stakeholders in maternal-infant health will participate in Missouri’s Maternal Health Task Force as part of a Maternal Health Innovation grant that was awarded at the end of 2024. Over five years, the MHTF will facilitate development of a comprehensive state maternal health plan that seeks to address the medical, behavioral, and social/structural drivers contributing to poor maternal health outcomes.

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. 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.