Colorado Hospital Substance Exposed Newborns Collaborative

The CHoSEN Collaborative is an effort to increase consistency in implementation of best practice in the identification of and response to newborns prenatally exposed to substances throughout the Rocky Mountain region.
​The cornerstone initiative of the CHoSEN Collaborative
is focused on quality improvement. Known as “CHoSEN
QIC”, this work is built around multidisciplinary hospital-based improvement teams working collaboratively to achieve measurable improvements.

News for Prenatal Providers 

​Perinatal substance use is a major public health concern in Colorado and throughout the Rocky Mountain region.

​Perinatal providers, hospital administrators, and clinical support staff are critical to improving outcomes for substance exposed newborns in the Rocky Mountain region.
Cases of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) in Colorado have increased by 120 percent from 2011 to 2016 based on hospital discharge coding data.1

The impact of prenatal exposure to alcohol or other drugs can include poor birth outcomes such as: 
  • low birth weight, 
  • preterm delivery, 
  • drug withdrawal, and 
  • longer term cognitive, behavioral, and developmental delays. 
1 NAS rate: Heroin Response Work Group. (2018). Heroin in Colorado.
2 Alcohol/Tobacco/MJ: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. (2016). 2016 Colorado Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System [data file].
​When hospitals commit to becoming members of CHoSEN QIC, teams use structured quality improvement methods to improve their local practices. 
​Professionals do not have to be associated with a hospital participating in CHoSEN QIC to have access to CHoSEN educational resources.