The Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative (FPQC), housed within USF’s College of Public Health (COPH), has one mission: to give Florida’s mothers, infants and families the best health outcomes possible via perinatal care that’s respectful, equitable, high quality and evidence based.

The FPQC partners with perinatal-related organizations, individuals, health professionals, advocates, policymakers, hospitals and payers (FPQC stakeholders) from around the state. The collaborative aims to develop health care quality improvement initiatives and data-driven best practices that ultimately promote the health and health care of mothers, infants and families.

A collaborative takes off

The FPQC was born in 2010.

“The need to focus on maternal and infant quality improvement issues was identified as a major issue in Florida when I worked for the Florida Department of Health (FDOH) as the state maternal and child health epidemiologist,” explained Dr. William Sappenfield, the FPQC’s current executive director. “As part of the multi-state envisioning and implementation process, we had to put together our Florida leadership team. I recruited Dr. John Curran [a now-retired neonatologist and former associate vice president for USF Health] to lead the Florida group of state partners.  As a group, we quickly recognized the need to create the Florida Perinatal Quality Collaborative, and the FPQC was established at the USF Chiles Center in 2010.”

The Chiles Center, also part of the COPH, is a multidisciplinary, community-engaged collective that promotes optimal health and health care for mothers and babies around the time of birth.

Curran was named the founding director while Sappenfield lent a supportive leadership role from his position with the FDOH. Upon arrival at USF as a COPH professor, Sappenfield became co-director. When Curran retired in 2017, Sappenfield took over at the helm of the FPQC.

“It takes more than a leader, it takes a team”

Over the last 13 years, the FPQC has developed a number of initiatives, resources and training modules to help ensure moms and their babies have the best shot at a healthy life. Some of them include:

• Postpartum Access & Continuity of Care (PACC) Initiative. Noting that as many as 40 percent of moms do not see a health care provider for postpartum care, the PACC Initiative works with women, health care providers and hospitals to provide a continuum of after-delivery care to prevent pregnancy-related deaths.

• PAIRED. This initiative works to better how families with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) engage and communicate with staff about the care of their infant.

• Levels of Maternal Care. This program is designed to promote Florida maternity hospitals’ participation in a verification program that aims to ensure mothers are cared for at hospitals that have the expertise, equipment and resources to appropriately treat their maternal needs, thereby reducing maternal morbidity and mortality.

“The FPQC has created a strong collaborative organization that works with all major state agencies and organizations,” Sappenfield noted. “Other organizations and individuals want to work with us because of our success. In 13 years, the FPQC has gone from working with six hospitals to all 105 Florida maternity hospitals. It takes more than a leader,” he added, “it takes a great team to do this quality of work, and the FPQC has been blessed with a highly capable one. Moreover, the FPQC has provided a great learning experience for many students as graduate assistants and volunteers who have helped develop data measures, reporting systems and quality initiatives, conduct surveys, evaluate initiatives and more.”

What’s next?

While Sappenfield will be retiring later this year, the FPQC will continue to trailblaze on behalf of moms and their babies.

“It is the improvement in maternal and infant health outcomes that I am most proud of,” Sappenfield said. “The FPQC is well positioned, resourced, led and staffed to continue to make a measurable difference in the health and health care of moms and babies for years to come.”

Story by Donna Campisano, USF College of Public Health