Please see below for a variety of resources recently shared by CHoSEN partners:

Please see below for upcoming events and opportunities to engage recently shared by CHoSEN partners:

Don’t miss the spring CHoSEN Forum! CHoSEN Collaborative will host its spring Forum virtually from 9 am-1:30 pm on April 15, 2021. The virtual forum will include a focus on prenatal engagement and safe discharge of families and two keynote presentations. Visit this page to learn more, see the agenda, and register for the event!

​Join a SEN Work/Advisory Group today! The Colorado SEN Steering Committee is recruiting participants for the work/advisory groups that will convene to advance its 2021-2022 priority areas. Visit this page to learn more about the Committee and its 2021-2022 priority areas and to sign up to join a work or advisory group. ​

Virtual Screening of "Community Voices": A Black Maternal Health Week in Colorado Event; Friday, April 16, 12 pm MT- In honor of Black Maternal Health Week 2021 (#BMHW21) occurring April 11-17, CPCQC invites you to attend a virtual documentary screening of "Community Voices." The infant mortality rate in Colorado is one of the lowest in the nation, so why is the death rate for Black babies over twice that of white babies? This short documentary depicts the experiences of the healthcare system by Black women in our community. The Addressing Infant and Maternal Mortality (AIMM) Medical Student Group at the CU School of Medicine will screen the film and facilitate a post-screening discussion about racism in the healthcare system. Register here.

Stigma, Equity and Trauma-Informed Care: Rebuilding Hospital Culture- Modeled on the CA Bridge implementation Blueprint, this “Boot Camp” series will provide specialized training and networking opportunities for hospital champions. Sessions will focus on changing the standard of care for substance use disorders, including clinical guidance for medication for addiction treatment (MAT), and health equity for underrepresented populations. You can join the webinars at any part in the series.

Stigma of Addiction Summit: June 10, 2021 | 12 pm-  6pm ET: Join the National Academy of Medicine, Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin, and Shatterproof on June 10, 2021 for the Stigma of Addiction Summit - a half-day, virtual, action-oriented summit entirely dedicated to understanding, addressing, and eliminating the harmful impacts of stigma on people who use drugs. 

The Summit will endeavor to elevate current efforts at reducing stigma, identify successes and gaps in the evidence base, and prioritize and identify areas for future research and funding with an explicit focus on stigma, which is often touched upon only marginally in broader conversations about addiction. 

The Summit is free to attend and will be recorded for viewing after the event concludes. Register to attend and/or submit an innovation abstract. ​

The Solution: Learning Directly from Families

To fill this gap, CHoSEN QIC has begun to engage birthing individuals in semi-structured qualitative interviews to better understand their birth hospitalization experience. By engaging directly with those involved, we aim to better understand the barriers and facilitators to implementing ESC and non-pharmacologic care during this time. These interviews focus on the following key areas: 

• The prenatal experience, including receipt of prenatal counseling
• The birth hospitalization itself, including interactions with the healthcare team and benefits and challenges of using ESC
• The transition from hospital to home, including follow-up care and anticipated challenges. 

 
Engaging in this process will allow us as a Collaborative to learn directly from those receiving this care with the goal of tailoring our interventions and approach to hospital care to best serve families. 
 
While this work is ongoing, so far, three key areas have emerged as important for families during this time:

• Setting clear and upfront expectations for how families can be successful during the birth hospitalization with their infant
• Engaging in shared-decision making when pharmacologic treatment or transfer to the NICU may be needed
• Preparing families for what to expect upon discharge and referring them to relevant community resources. 

 
One participant emphasized the importance of education throughout this process by saying, “One thing has been consistent through both of my experiences, I was very surprised at how every staff member, specifically the RNs knew a significant amount about withdrawal, the adverse effects of medication vs. no medication. They were very non-biased and very informative, and they all were consistent on what they knew, you can tell the information was accurate.” ​

Lutheran Medical Center is one of the founding hospitals of the CHoSEN Quality Improvement Collaborative. Jillian Adams, director of strategic initiatives for Illuminate Colorado sat down with Dr. Erica Wymore to discuss how she and the team at Lutheran Medical Center are utilizing their electronic health record (EHR) system to support their hospital’s CHoSEN practice changes, particularly related to breastfeeding practices. 

Dr. Wymore is the Medical Director of the Newborn ICU at Lutheran Medical Center, a faculty member at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and a member of the Steering Committee for CHoSEN QIC has been part of this effort from the beginning, continuing to innovate around supporting opioid-exposed newborns and their families.

 The Challenge: Communication Across Mother and Infant Provider Teams

Examination of data across CHoSEN hospitals revealed variability among breastfeeding rates for substance-exposed newborns, leading to a desire to improve these rates among mother-infant dyads affected by a substance use disorder.   

To begin addressing this need, Lutheran Medical Center worked to create a process map to help them understand, reflect on, and identify room for improvement in their policies and procedures for determining a dyad’s breastfeeding eligibility and effectively and consistently communicating it between providers and to families.

Engaging in this process led to the identification of a challenge with ensuring that important information from the mother’s medical record and provider team is reflected in the infant’s medical record and shared with the infant’s provider team. 

The Solution: Ask What Your EHR System Can Do for You

With this challenge identified, the team at Lutheran began collaborating with their electronic health record provider to develop improved and automated workflows within their EHR system to ensure that important information related to a mother-infant dyad’s breastfeeding eligibility is available in all of the necessary places. Watch the interview with Dr. Wymore to learn more about how Lutheran Medical Center developed their process map and is working with their EHR provider to create new workflows.

Looking for Solutions for your Hospital?

If your site is interested in implementing similar innovations, Dr. Wymore advises developing a process map to identify your hospital’s key players and then working to provide clear and consistent education that will ensure families affected by prenatal substance exposure receive the best and most consistent care. CHoSEN QIC is able to support hospitals through these innovations by conducting a virtual site visit and helping teams with steps like developing a process map. To request and schedule a virtual site visit, contact Jessica Scott.

Additional Resources:

• To learn more about all of CHoSEN’s key drivers, including breastfeeding, check out CHoSEN’s provider education videos here. 
• Breastfeeding guidelines from American Academy of Pediatrics can be found here and guidelines from the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine can be found here.