THE TRANSPARENCY IN MATERNITY CARE PROJECT
THREE PRIMARY COMPONENTS OF THE PROJECT
• SHARE: At the heart of the project is an on-going, online consumer survey, “The Birth Survey,” which asks women to provide feedback about their birth experience with a particular doctor or midwife and within a specific birth environment. Currently, “The Birth Survey” is only available as a pilot in NYC.
• CONNECT: Responses will be made available online to other women in their community who are deciding where and with whom to birth. Women can view feedback on hospitals, birth centers, doctors and midwives in their communities.
• LEARN: Paired with this experiential data will be official statistics from state departments of health listing obstetrical intervention rates at the facility level. Consumers can view data on hospital and birth center intervention rates and practices. This data will be added to the website as we make it available.
WHEN WILL THE PROJECT BE AVAILABLE IN OUR AREA?
Right now, The Birth Survey is being piloted in New York City only. In order to make the survey available to women in Northwest Arkansas and the surrounding region, The Birth Survey must purchase a comprehensive list of all maternity care providers and maternity care facilities in the US. (OBs, CNMs, and Family Practice Docs, hospitals, birth centers. etc) These names and addresses will be added to the drop-down list of providers and facilities in the first section of the survey, so that survey results can be tied to individual providers and facilities. This list cost thousands of dollars and will have to be updated annually for accuracy. You can donate to this national portion of the campaign through www.givemeaning.com.
Next, grassroots activists “on the ground” in our area must obtain the official data necessary to complement the Birth Survey information. We currently have volunteers in Northwest Arkansas working to organize the effort to obtain the intervention data.
Please let us know if you are interested in being a part of a "Four-State Transparency in Maternity Care Task Force" to bring the Birth Survey to other parts of Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. A training meeting for this task force will take place on April 19th, 2008 in Springdale, AR. Visit our calendar page for information on how you can register for the training and take part in the local phase of this project.
The Transparency in Maternity Care Project was birthed in February of 2006 by the Grassroots Advocates Committee (GAC) of the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services (CIMS). The GAC is a volunteer group dedicated to insuring public access to quality of care information specifically related to maternity care providers and institutions. BirthNetwork of Northwest Arkansas is joining with the GAC to promote The Transparency Project in our community. It is our intention to extend the current social trend toward Transparency in Health Care into the virtually overlooked maternity care arena.
TIMELINE
Objective 1: Begin to Raise Awareness about Transparency
January 18, 2008: Special Benefit Screening of “The Business of Being Born.” Proceeds of this fundraising event will be used for the local Transparency in Maternity Project. We will encourage mothers to take “The Birth Survey,” in the fall of 2008. The Panel Discussion and Q&A afterwards will focus on transparency in maternity care and informed decision making.
Objective 2: Gain Skills to bring Transparency in Maternity Care into our Community
March 6-9, 2008: We will send one or two chapter leaders of our organization to the 2008 CIMS Forum: Mother-Friendly Care By All, For All, where the Grassroots Advocates Committee (GAC) of CIMS will be hosting an all-day “train the trainer” program designed to help grassroots birth activists learn how to:
1. Organize volunteers in their communities around a single project2. Understand the importance of maternal intervention data from hospitals and providers and how to make this information relevant and meaningful to consumers3. Research how to get maternal intervention data from their state health departments4.Go home and organize trainings in their communities for interested activists.Objective 3: Train other Birth Activists to bring Transparency in Maternity Care into their Communities
April 19, 2008 Organize and hold a training for other interested activists from throughout the states of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma (The 4-State area). Training will be offered on the previous topics. We also will form a “Four-State Transparency in Maternity Care Task Force” to
1. Gather provider lists and intervention data from the hospitals and health departments for “The Birth Survey.”2. Market the national release of “The Birth Survey.” 3. Encourage grass-root advocate groups from Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, and Oklahoma to start a chapter of BirthNetwork National in their own communities.Objective 4: Increase Transparency of Maternity Care by Making Information on Local Maternity Care Providers Available to Women in our Community
August 2008: Complete data acquisition from hospitals and health departments for our area and post on “The Birth Survey” website.
September 2008: Market and Launch “The Birth Survey” and BirthNetwork in our area.
We need VOLUNTEERS to help us in all areas of this project. If you are passionate about improving maternity care and want to do what you can to bring this project to your community, contact us! If you have skills in marketing/public relations, fundraising, organizing, writing, editing, web design - you name it - we would love to hear from you. Please contact us at birthnetworknwa@hotmail.com for further information.
GOALS
We believe that women of childbearing age must have access to information that will help them choose maternity care providers and institutions that are most compatible with their own philosophies and needs. We hope that the Transparency in Maternity Care Project will provide information that will help women make fully informed maternity care decisions.
We also believe that maternity care practitioners and institutions must have access to feedback from their patients. We hope that doctors, midwives, and hospital administrators will find the information generated through the Transparency in Maternity Care Project useful in quality improvement efforts.
