The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative, part of the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Expansion Project, is a hospital and community-based effort to improve outcomes for mothers and newborns impacted by substance exposure, with a specific focus on Opioid Use Disorder.

The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative will emphasize care that maintains the mother-baby dyad throughout the hospital stay and will also address treatment and prevention of substance exposure during and after pregnancy. 

Key components of this initiative include:

  • ​An interactive online toolkit for maternal and newborn care providers on perinatal substance exposure developed by a multidisciplinary task force of maternal and newborn healthcare experts from across California
  • Expert-led quality improvement collaboratives to support implementation of toolkit best practices, for hospitals in selected counties across Northern, Central and Southern California
  • Tools and resources for collecting and reporting data to support quality improvement
  • Mobilization and support for public and private partners across the state
  • A network of other states that have implemented the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health National Collaborative Opioid Bundle 

 

The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Toolkit

The Interactive Online Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Toolkit is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience.

The interactive online toolkit shares best practices across the care continuum for screening, assessment and level of care determination; treatment; transition of care; and education. Best practices are organized both by topic area and the type of practice setting: outpatient, labor and delivery and nursery-NICU. Key themes of the toolkit include:

  • Every pregnant woman/person should be screened
  • Every pregnant woman/person with opioid use disorder (OUD) should be on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT)
  • Providers should encourage non-pharmacologic treatment for neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) where appropriate based on increasing evidence demonstrating its superiority
  • Moms/birthing people and babies should receive support to keep them together

 

Funding Acknowledgement

CMQCC and CPQCC jointly published this toolkit in collaboration with Health Management Associates (HMA). The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative is funded by the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) as part of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response grant.