Collaborative Model Overview
The Kansas Perinatal Community Collaborative Model brings together public health and clinical care services to assure comprehensive and coordinated perinatal supports. This model of shared risks shared resources, and shared rewards help communities leverage existing resources (staff, space, clients, programmatic materials, etc.) and funding to more effectively serve a common set of perinatal clients. Perinatal systems of care are redesigned and institutionalized as partners come together to meet local needs.
Collaborative Model Overview & Historical Perspective
In 2010, following the release of the Kansas Blue Ribbon Panel on Infant Mortality initial recommendations, the March of Dimes Greater Kansas Chapter began development of community collaboratives designed to implement the Becoming a Mom/Comenzando bien® curriculum, bringing prenatal education and clinical prenatal care together to create a comprehensive program model. The program was targeted at communities with the demonstrated birth outcome and infant mortality disparities, both racial/ethnic and socioeconomic.
The model was driven by private and public partnerships at both state and local levels, including Title V Maternal and Child Health, Medicaid, private foundations, local health departments, federally qualified health centers, clinical providers, local hospitals, and community and faith-based organizations. This brought permanent MCH infrastructure, leveraged and shared resources, changes in the prenatal care delivery system, a vehicle to identify community needs, a standardized evaluation system, and new opportunities for achieving community collective impact and improved birth outcomes.