An Initiative to Improve Maternal Health
Focusing on Improving Maternal Health Outcomes
In 2019, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) awarded the National Healthy Start Association (NHSA) with a cooperative agreement for a five-year project focused on improving maternal health outcomes across the United States. This program would become the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health Community Care Initiative (AIM CCI).
Goals of the Project
AIM CCI’s goal is to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity through the development and implementation of non-hospital focused maternal safety bundles across community and outpatient settings. These safety bundles are sets of evidence-based practices meant to improve maternal health outcomes. The bundles are created to address specific areas of need in communities that experience high rates of maternal mortality and morbidity.
By utilizing an equity framework at all stages, AIM CCI also seeks to reduce disparities in health outcomes based on race and ethnicity. Black and Native birthing persons are around three times more likely to die from pregnancy complications than white birthing persons. The root causes of these racial inequities in maternal health care must be uncovered and addressed.
(Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/maternal-deaths/index.html)
Why Focus on the Community?
The community and outpatient setting was deliberately chosen to help address systemic inequities in regions with poor health outcomes for pregnant and postpartum birthing persons. Community organizations know the birthing persons in their region best—they are in more frequent contact and communication with birthing persons no matter where they are on the pregnancy or postpartum continuum. They also understand the specific challenges women in their region face. If community organizations and traditional health care structures can connect and communicate, public health interventions can be tailored to meet the specific needs of birthing persons in a particular region and outcomes can be improved.
Request for Proposals (RFP)
Project Need
National Healthy Start Association (NHSA) seeks to conduct a comprehensive program evaluation of its Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health Community Care Initiative (AIM CCI).
Introduction
The evaluation will generate quantitative and qualitative data to assess the extent that AIM CCI project activities caused or contributed to an increase in:
a. knowledge and awareness of non-hospital focused maternal safety bundles (MSB), and how bundle contents are related to best practices for providers, community-based organizations, and outpatient/postpartum clinical settings.
b. the capacity to implement and test non-hospital focused MSBs including development of QI systems.
c. the number of non-hospital focused MSBs developed that address emerging topics in the provision of maternal care services.
d. implementation of the non-hospital focused MSBs within non-clinical community-based organizations and outpatient clinical settings across states/communities.
e. the capacity of staff and providers in both inpatient and outpatient clinical settings to address racial/ethnic disparities when implementing all non-hospital focused MSBs.
f. the evidence base on the implementation of non-hospital focused MSBs; and
g. the number and representativeness of local MSBs established. Evaluation findings will be used to inform progress towards project goals over the performance period, 2019 – 2024.
Compensation will be at a rate of $150 / hour with maximum funding for this project not to exceed $60,000.
The AIM CCI Team
As a part of NHSA, the AIM CCI team is composed of experts in the maternal and child health fields with decades of experience. Learn more about the qualifications of the AIM CCI team here.
