73 - Regional community meetings to support hospital engagement of patients and community members in quality improvement

Saturday, February 11, 2023

9:15 AM – 9:30 AM

Location: Room 3009, Moscone West, Level 3

Objective: The Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative (ILPQC) Birth Equity (BE) initiative aims to engage hospitals to promote birth equity and address disparities, including engaging patients/community members to provide input on quality improvement (QI). This analysis describes the Regional Community Engagement Meetings (RCEMs) model for patient and community engagement through a statewide QI initiative.

Study Design: 86 hospital teams submitted rosters to participate in the ILPQC BE initiative and reported monthly progress on key structure measures including community engagement. ILPQC collaborated with all 10 regional perinatal networks across Illinois and the state maternal health equity coalition, Everthrive IL, to identify local community members (patients and community stakeholders) and co-facilitate the RCEMs. The RCEMs provided best practices for community engagement and a panel discussion with local community members on BE key strategies. ILPQC used RCEMs attendance logs to quantify participation and surveys to collect qualitative feedback.

Results: Ten RCEMs were completed across Illinois between Feb-Jul 2022. A total of 29 community members/patients and 66 (77%) of hospital BE teams attended in total. In addition, 62% of teams were working on or had engaged community members in QI work by Mar-May 2022 compared to only 18% teams at baseline (Oct-Dec 2021, p= .001). Hospitals reported that they valued the RCEMs discussion and input from community members on their experiences related to BE. The RCEMs also contributed to the development of relationships between hospitals and local community stakeholders to foster ongoing community engagement activities.

Conclusion: The ACOG/SMFM Joint Statement (2020) on Collective Action Addressing Racism highlights the importance of engaging community members to reduce disparities in maternal health outcomes and improve birth equity. The results of this analysis suggest that the facilitation of RCEMs through a statewide QI initiative is associated with increased hospital community engagement to inform QI strategies to improve birth equity.

Primary Author(s)

IJ

Ieshia Johnson, MPH

Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Chicago, Illinois, United States

Coauthor(s)

Patricia Lee King, PhD, MSW (she/her/hers)

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Chicago, Illinois, United States
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Suyeon Lee, PhD

Northwestern University
Chicago, Illinois, United States

Presenting Author(s)

Ann Borders, MD, MPH, MSc (she/her/hers)

Clinical Associate Professor, Executive Director ILPQC
NorthShore University HealthSystem, Evanston Hospital
Evanston, Illinois, United States