The Illinois Perinatal Collaborative, or ILPQC, is a network of individuals dedicated to improving health care for birthing people and infants. The vision of this collaborative “involves all perinatal stakeholders; utilizes data-driven, evidence-based practices; improves perinatal quality resulting in improved birth outcomes, improved health for women and infants, and decreased costs and builds on Illinois’ existing state-mandated Perinatal System.”
Recently, our Community Engagement Director, Tamela Milan-Alexander, has been working with ILPQC to share valuable information that can help birthing people in communities across the state. ILPQC and EverThrive Illinois working together is significant because the organization and the collaborative have similar initiatives in Birth Equity. Their Birth Equity Summer Series included hosting Birth Equity Team Webinars, presented by Tamela on behalf of EverThrive Illinois.
These presentations were geared toward people interested in improving birth outcomes in their communities. Tamela provided information on connecting patients to resources and services to help them and building partnerships and connections in communities with community-based organizations and patients.
“The Birth Equity Summer Series offered by EverThrive IL and ILPQC was excellent and exceeded my expectations! Over the past year, ILPQC and hospitals have done incredible work improving these initiatives, but engaging patient partners must remain a priority,” said Myra Sabini, a member of ILPQC’s Birth Equity Team.
“The summer series speakers shared their knowledge on how to respectfully engage community members and optimize community member input so that they can share their valuable, lived experiences, integrating that community feedback within our hospital systems.”
This adds to the work being done to eliminate disparities in health care and help decrease maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and collaborating with other organizations allows important lifesaving information to reach more people.
Learn more about our birth equity work or visit ILPQC’s Birth Equity page on their website.