We are entering our second year as AABC’s technical research partner for the Strong Start for Mothers & Newborns grant from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Innovation Center. The aim of the Strong Start project is to reduce preterm births and improve outcomes for newborns and pregnant women. Specifically, the study is designed to test and evaluate enhanced prenatal care interventions for women enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP who are at risk for having a preterm birth. Our multidisciplinary team has contributed expertise in research, data science, user interface design, and systems engineering to assist AABC in its role as grant administrator to the 40 birth center sites participating in the study.
As part of our work with AABC, the Perinatal Data Registry (PDR) was moved to the Maternity Neighborhood platform. The move allowed for some required enhancements to the PDR to support data collection needs, better data export, and reporting capabilities specific to Strong Start.
Participation as a Strong Start partner has afforded us the opportunity to develop web-based patient satisfaction surveys, risk assessments, and education tools. Strong Start birth center sites will begin using these tools in July of this year. Most exciting is that we deliberately developed the tools to be configured in a data model compatible with the PDR. This allows us to merge the patient reported data with the clinical outcomes data. This is a significant capability and essentially allows us to add the woman’s experience to the data. Just like the Midwives Model of Care, the goal is to have the data be woman-centered.
Along with patient reported outcomes, we’re excited to partner with Childbirth Connection and Lamaze International to offer curated, evidence-based education materials to all women enrolled in the Strong Start study. This content, along with personalized content from AABC, CMS, and the enrolled practices, will be automatically delivered to women at appropriate gestational ages and women will be able to review, comment, and send messages about the content to their providers.
The world of maternity research just keep getting better!
“Woman-centered, user-friendly HIT innovations like this one can accelerate progress toward the 2020 vision of high-quality, high-value maternity care.”
– Maureen Corry, Senior Advisor for Childbirth Connection Programs, National Partnership for Women and Families
