March/April Evidence Column is Available

National Quality Forum Identifying Perinatal Performance Measures
The National Quality Forum (NQF) is identifying a set of national standardized NQF-endorsed Perinatal Care performance measures for facilities and health professionals, as well as gaps in available measures. Performance measurement will be used to help choose, purchase and improve maternity care. Childbirth Connection's Executive Director Maureen Corry co-chairs the Steering Committee that is guiding this work.

Learn more about NQF Perinatal Care project


Commentary about Six Aims for Improvement in Maternity Care
The Institute of Medicine's landmark Crossing the Quality Chasm report identified 6 widely adopted aims for improvement for the nation: health care should be safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable. A new commentary uses results from Childbirth Connection's national Listening to Mothers II survey to illustrate challenges of achieving these aims in maternity care, and points to work under way to address the challenges. Written by senior staff Carol Sakala and Maureen Corry, the commentary is available to those with access to print or online versions of the March/April 2008 issue of Women's Health Issues.

Go to Women's Health Issues website

Among Top 20 Most Accessed Cochrane Reviews in 2007
The Cochrane systematic review "Continuous Support for Women During Childbirth" was one of the top 20 most accessed reviews in 2007 - out of several thousand available! Congratulations to Carol Sakala, our director of programs, who is a co-author. The full review is freely available at our website.

Go to Continuous Support for Women During Childbirth

How You Can Use Your Childbirth Connection Account:
"My Connection"
We have created a way for you to keep track of all of your most referred to pages at ChildbirthConnection.org. You can save "bookmarks" for these pages in your account, accessible to you each time you log in. You can easily email these to women you care for and colleagues or return again to the selected pages yourself.

Just go to the top right of the screen, login, and click the "My Connection" link. You will see a link for "My Bookmarks," where your bookmarked pages are stored. To bookmark a page, use the link at the end of each article.

Go to My Bookmarks
(you must be logged in to view)

For your reference, we have compiled a summary of our online material for childbearing women. It goes into a level of detail that is generally not possible during prenatal visits and childbirth education classes. It includes guidance for VBAC vs c-section, preventing pelvic floor dysfunction, forms of labor support, and much more. The For Women area of our website offers a trustworthy alternative to the incomplete and inaccurate information that women may receive from books and websites and their friends and relatives. Go to Pregnancy Resources for Women

Please Support Childbirth Connection
We aim to give you free access to the highest quality information in evidence-based maternity care. In addition to our entire website, we offer dozens of free PDFs to professionals and childbearing women. Please consider a gift of any amount if you find value in our work. Give online today - we will put it to good use!  

 
Wishing you the best,
Childbirth Connection