January 11, 2022 - Melbourne, FL - MoMMAs Voices and the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) have partnered to provide an enhanced integration of lived experiences into Quality Improvement (QI) initiatives to foster safe, respectful, and equitable care to pregnant and postpartum people.

“The integration of patients’ lived experience into quality improvement teams is critical to the success of our efforts to decrease preventable maternal morbidity and mortality in the U.S.,” said AIM Senior
Director at ACOG Christie Allen.

The Lived Experience Integration into QI Community of Learning (COL) training program is an eight-week educational series created by MoMMAs Voices and funded by AIM. The program will run January to May 2022 and will serve three cohorts of 23 AIM state and jurisdiction-based teams, Indian Health Services facilities, and other healthcare entities.

During the eight-week AIM COL program, each cohort will learn how to effectively build a patient engagement culture centered on the Lived Experience Integration™, a concept developed by MoMMAs Voices. The program teaches how to perform work that integrates patients and families with lived experience into patient safety bundle implementation and other QI initiatives.

“Partnering with AIM is an important milestone to amplify the patient voice for maternal healthcare improvements here in the United States,” said Nicole Purnell, Program Director of MoMMAs Voices. “Most importantly, the AIM COL program focuses on the inclusion of lower-resourced communities and special populations who we know are falling through the cracks of maternal healthcare in order to address healthcare disparities.”

MoMMAs Voices offers certified training for patient family partners, organizations that represent them, maternal healthcare providers, and researchers to partner together effectively. The Lived Experience Integration™ is the framework that guides healthcare providers to partner and integrate the patient or family members’ “lived experiences” into their work. To keep patients at the center of quality improvement, providers and healthcare facilities are matched with certified patient family partners that best represent the communities they serve. Through these partnerships, the patient voice is used to improve maternal health outcomes.

About MoMMAs Voices
MoMMAs (Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Advocates) Voices is the first-ever maternal health patient advocacy coalition established in 2018, to amplify the voices of people who have experienced childbirth complications or loss - especially those who have been historically marginalized - ensuring they are equipped and activated as partners with providers and researchers to improve maternal health outcomes. This is a program of the Preeclampsia Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and is supported by a grant through Merck for Mothers. For more information, visit mommasvoices.org and
preeclampsia.org.

About AIM
The Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) is the national, cross-sector commitment designed to lead in the development and implementation of patient safety bundles for the promotion of safe care for every U.S. birth. Founded in 2014 through a cooperative agreement funded by the Health Services Resources Administration (HRSA) and executed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the AIM program provides expert technical support and capacity building to multidisciplinary state-based teams, most often perinatal quality collaboratives, leading targeted rapid-cycle quality improvement (QI) via implementation of patient safety bundles. For more information, visit https://aimformaternalsafety.org.