Frequently Asked Questions - Birth Equity

CMQCC is leading this work in partnership with hospitals, CBOs, and state/national and local advisors. CMQCC is a multi-stakeholder group based at Stanford University that focuses on improving hospital-based maternity care in California. CMQCC has previously managed data-driven projects that incorporated best practices, learning collaboratives, and brought together existing and new partnerships in order to sustain and advance maternal health. Through our ongoing efforts and partnerships, CMQCC has helped California to produce one of the lowest overall maternal mortality rates in the country.

Since 1999, the reported maternal mortality data in California show a persistent 3-4x gap between Black mothers and mothers from all other racial groups. Also, maternal mortality rates nearly doubled in California between 1999 and 2006. CMQCC was founded in 2006 at Stanford University School of Medicine together with the State of California. Since CMQCC’s inception, California’s  maternal mortality rate has declined by 55 percent while the national maternal mortality rate continued to rise. The expectation was that widespread adoption of CMQCC’s clinical safety bundles would reduce the gap in the number of maternal deaths among Black women. However, the difference in outcomes for Black mothers compared with all other racial groups has persisted.

Further analysis revealed that clinical safety bundles and social support interventions done in isolation, without an integrated approach, did not produce the desired outcomes. Thus, CMQCC’s Birth Equity Collaborative presents an opportunity to develop QI tools to promptly evaluate and transform birth care, experiences, and outcomes through the integration of clinical and sociocultural interventions and community-hospital partnerships

• Data shows that even in the absence of risk factors such as age over 35 years, lack of health insurance, inadequate or no prenatal care, and less than high school education, the U.S. system of health care is not protecting Black mothers and birthing people from experiencing higher numbers of deaths or life-threatening complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
• Increasing evidence points to racism within and across multiple levels, and not race, as a key cause of these birth disparities.
• Data also show variations in the quality of care and outcomes across hospitals in California, highlighting opportunities for advancing equity in quality improvement.

The success that California has achieved in the significant reduction in maternal mortality rates is a direct reflection of the outcomes that are possible when collaboration exists around a patient safety concern. The existing data and literature evidence has provided the impetus to formalize an action plan to address this racial equity issue. With our California Birth Equity Collaborative pilot, CMQCC aims to transform birth care for Black mothers and birthing people together with Black women-led CBOs and our hospital partners.

We know from our data that many outcomes vary significantly across hospitals in California. We know from our past work that it is possible to address this variation. We fully recognize that the origins and effects of mistreatment and disrespect impact Black mothers and birthing communities far before, during, and after pregnancy and childbirth. As a start, our intent is to focus this work on a discrete, manageable setting (the hospital) where we believe we can make a significant impact in birth care and outcomes.

Hospitals are a critical, nearly universal site of maternity care; more than 98% of births occur there nationally. Hospital providers need to provide holistic, culturally congruent care that is both evidence-based and personalized to the needs of individuals and communities within the context of their lived experiences. Hospitals are an important setting in which it is possible to significantly impact birth care and outcomes. Additionally, CMQCC has the expertise, existing data tools and relationships focused on improving clinical care in the hospital setting. However, we anticipate that most if not all of our approaches will also be applicable to the outpatient setting in the future.

Black women clinicians, social scientists, and public health scholars with institutional affiliation outside of our key community areas will serve as mentors to support the overall pilot goals, activities, and measures of success in our state/national advisory group.

CMQCC will facilitate partnerships between participating hospitals and local advisory groups including patient representatives, community members and hospital staff whose role is to address the specific pilot goals, activities and measures at each of the three pilot hospitals.

The California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), an independent, nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Oakland, is funding the California Birth Equity Collaborative pilot. This is the first large-scale project CHCF is funding as part of its new focus on supporting birth equity in California. CHCF has been a major funder of CMQCC's Maternal Data Center (MDC) for many years. The Maternal Data Center is an online web tool that generates current data, performance metrics and quality improvement insights on maternity care services for hospital participants. Hospitals representing 95% of the births in California have chosen to join CMQCC and submit data to the MDC. Other work funded by CHCF as part of its efforts to improve maternity care in California includes a statewide effort to reduce the overuse of Cesarean Births and work to improve maternal mental health. To learn more about CHCF, visit: www.chcf.org

Over a two-year period, the Collaborative will partner with community stakeholders and hospitals in the co-development and co-testing of the following:

1. Community-informed theoretical model to develop a participatory patient-reported experience metric (PREM)
2. Series of online interactive and interprofessional educational modules:
   • to raise awareness and knowledge of the historical origins and present day examples of racism, mistreatment, discrimination, and disrespect experienced in the daily lives of Black mothers and birthing people across society and in our health systems
   • to increase hospital providers’ confidence in describing and reducing the impact of different types of discrimination and injustices on Black birthing people’s care, autonomy, and dignity
   • to provide effective patient-centered communication techniques to transform counseling and shared decision-making for Black mothers and birthing people
3. Best practices for developing effective and sustainable community-hospital partnerships that are comprised of local CBOs, community members and Black birthing people

The Collaborative will conclude with the development of a Birth Equity Quality Improvement Toolkit reflecting learnings from the two-year pilot.

Black women-led CBOs and CMQCC can collaborate in two ways:

1. Development and testing of quality improvement tools and approaches in hospitals in four key areas: evaluation and assessments, education and training, social media and communications, and community informed consensus building
2. Development of effective and sustainable community-hospital partnerships through local advisory groups for each of the pilot hospitals.

For information about CBO partnerships and the potential for grant funding from the California Health Care Foundation to advance the Collaborative’s goals and activities within the hospitals or local advisory groups, please contact Karen A. Scott, MD, MPH, Director: kscott@cmqcc.org. 

We will feel that the pilot has been successful if we — meaning CMQCC’s California Birth Equity Collaborative, communities, hospitals, and advisors working together — are able to do the following:

• Show improvement in a newly developed and validated patient-reported experience metric of respect and dignity
• Create and sustain respectful and culturally responsive partnerships among Black mothers and birthing people, CBOs, the Collaborative, hospitals, and advisors
• Have the e-learning course completed by hospital staff at each of the pilot hospitals
• Build pilot hospital capacity to view and interpret their Birth Equity dashboard; co-identify strategies to advance birth equity; and incorporate regular data metric presentations and techniques to achieve key birth equity goals
• Observe and characterize change in birth culture and staff knowledge, attitudes, and skills in advancing a culture of birth equity

If we are successful with our Collaborative goals, we expect to reduce the variation in maternal outcome measurements for Black mothers and birthing people compared with all other races in the long term.