261678 Applying a quality improvement approach to increase Baby-Friendly designation in U.S. hospitals

Wednesday, October 31, 2012 : 10:30 AM - 10:47 AM

Dayanne Leal, MA , Best Fed Beginnings, National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ), Boston, MA
Charles J. Homer, MD, MPH, CEO , National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ), Boston, MA
Karthika Streb, MPH , National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality (NICHQ), Boston, MA
The environment in which a mother delivers her infant, and in which the infant spends their first days of life, exerts a strong influence on the likelihood that the mother will initiate breastfeeding and continue to breastfeed her infant for an extended period of time. The Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and associated Baby-Friendly Designation characterize hospital environments that promote breastfeeding.

Best Fed Beginnings is a quality improvement initiative designed to help hospitals nationwide make changes to maternity care policies and practices to better support mothers to be able to breastfeed their babies. Sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and conducted by the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality, this initiative features an 18-month quality improvement learning collaborative composed of up to 90 teams from hospitals across the US, focusing on hospitals serving racially, ethnically, and geographically disadvantaged populations. The learning collaborative applies quality improvement methods to help hospitals progress through the 4-D pathway to Baby-Friendly designation and to address common barriers in achieving designation.

This session will detail the aims and activities of the learning collaborative with a special focus on the underlying improvement science driving the project. We will describe the improvement model developed to rapidly spread strategies for successful promotion of and address barriers to exclusive breastfeeding practice. We will overview the project's theory of change and measurement strategy for leveraging improvement science to increase Baby-Friendly designation among hospitals in the US.

Learning Areas:
Diversity and culture
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Program planning
Provision of health care to the public
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
- Describe how the Best Fed Beginnings Initiative applies quality improvement methods to promote exclusive breastfeeding within US hospitals. - Identify applications of quality improvement methods to the 4-D Designation Pathway. - Explain how participating hospitals in the collaborative address common barriers to achieving Baby-Friendly designation.

Keywords: Breast Feeding, Quality Improvement

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the senior project manager for the Best Fed Beginnings initiative.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.