Maternal-Child Learning and Action Network: A Look Into MO PQC’s Advisory Body
Published Sep 22, 2025
What is the MC LAN?
The Maternal-Child Learning and Action Network brings together health care professionals, community-based organizations, state agencies, patients and other stakeholders around an evidence-based agenda to achieve rapid, widescale improvement in maternal and infant health. The Missouri Perinatal Quality Collaborative is guided in its work by the recommendations of the MC LAN. Originally, the MC LAN grew out of a realization that multiple agencies were working on maternal-child health in Missouri at the same time, often with the same people at the table discussing the same issues. The goal in forming the group was to reduce redundancy and prevent the different organizations from working in silos.
Who makes up the MC LAN?
The MC LAN is made up of individuals and organizations from across the state working to improve maternal and infant outcomes in Missouri. This includes clinicians, non-clinical providers and birth support workers, policymakers, state and local organizations, payors, patients with lived experience and more.
What does the MC LAN do?
The MC LAN provides assistance, exchange of knowledge, and peer support for the creation of effective maternal and infant quality initiatives. Through collaborative projects, online interactions and peer-to-peer education, participants develop a shared commitment, energy and knowledge to improve health care for pregnant and postpartum people, infants, and their families. The members use their time together to bolster current initiatives (such as Ask Me 5, Citizen Memorial Hospital’s Mobile Integrated Health program, etc.) and to brainstorm solutions to barriers and challenges related to maternal and infant health (e.g., maternity care deserts, addressing patients’ clinical and non-clinical needs, etc.). Participants bring their knowledge of local and regional efforts, subject matter expertise, and input for regional and statewide efforts. MC LAN members also take what they learn from the group back to their respective communities and colleagues, elevating the collective impact.
The MC LAN Summit
The MC LAN holds an annual summit as a chance for its members to address issues in maternal and infant health as well as taking time to network and relax with one another. At this year’s three-day summit, members shared updates on programs and initiatives related to postpartum care, clinical-community integration, neonatal quality improvement, and storytelling to secure and sustain funding. Maternal and infant stakeholders also joined breakout sessions where they brainstormed tactics to increase implementation of quality improvement initiatives, strategies for disseminating information on best practices in maternal and infant care, ways to address low birth weight, and finetuning components of the State Maternal Health Plan. After working sessions in the morning and early afternoon, members were left to their own devices for the rest of the day — whether that meant splashing in the pool, joining the fabled ghost tour of the Elms Hotel, or taking time to reconnect with old friends or make new ones. MC LAN members left feeling refreshed and reinvigorated in their mission to support Health Moms, Healthy Babies, Healthy Missouri.