2023-10-01 19:02:29
GRAND FORKS — UND has been awarded $200,000 from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to improve clinical care for pregnant and postpartum people across North Dakota.
The money will be used to hire a full-time staff person to work directly with the region’s hospitals through the North and South Dakota Perinatal Quality Collaborative, directed by Andrew Williams, an assistant professor of public health at UND. The new staffer will gather information and data about the hospitals’ needs, as well as increase communication between NSDPQC and the facilities, according to Williams.
The grant money comes from the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health program, which aims to reduce high maternal mortality rates in the U.S. by promoting safe care for every birth. UND, as well as its program partner institution South Dakota State University, are two of 28 institutions to receive the funding.
The NSDPQC is already involved with seven hospitals in North Dakota and eight in South Dakota, covering 81% and 65% of the births in those states, respectively, Williams said. The new grant money will allow the NSDPQC to conduct needs assessments at those birth facilities to determine gaps in care over the next four years.
“We’ll be using these (Health Resources and Services Administration) dollars to identify what the hospitals need to make sure that these quality improvement projects are working well for them,” Williams said. “Maybe things like assistance with some of their data, maybe some additional training and knowledge, collaborating with other hospitals to find out what other people are doing that are successful, those types of things.”
He anticipates NSDPQC’s role will be to help implement changes and provide technical assistance to hospitals while the hospitals themselves lead the conversation in terms of what their needs are. Those needs will likely vary by facility, he said.
“We have the big hospitals covered — the Altrus, and the Sanfords, you know, they do most of the births in the state — but we want to make sure that some of the smaller facilities that are providing their services are also enrolled as well,” Williams said. “We know that there’s a difference between the hospitals and the patient populations that they see. … So working within the state, we know there’s a kind of different experience at the hospital level as well.”
The first trend NSDPQC hopes to address is substance abuse among pregnant people in North Dakota, a number that has risen in recent years, Williams said.
Nationally, an estimated 7 to 8% of pregnancies are complicated by substance use, but that’s likely an underestimate due to reporting issues. However, smoking during pregnancy tends to be a good indicator of additional substance use during pregnancy, and smoking data tends to be much more reliable, Williams said. That number in North Dakota is around 10 to 12% of pregnant people — and Williams believes that’s a much better estimate of the rate of substance abuse during pregnancy.
“We think it’s at least that high, probably a little bit higher in our region,” he said. “And that obviously has a range of complications for both the mom and the baby as well.”
In the coming years, his team also hopes to address barriers to care in the state, especially disparities in rural and urban populations as well as racial and ethnic disparities.
“It’s been pretty persistent in our region,” he said. “And we just want to try to find a better way to address some of those, but we know it’s going to be a pretty big challenge.”
Hannah Shirley is the managing editor for the Grand Forks Herald. Shirley previously covered cops and courts for the Herald. They are a 2018 graduate of the University of Idaho, and prior to working for the Herald worked as a reporter for the Berkshire Record in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Shirley can be reached at hshirley@gfherald.com.
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