Quality Improvement Approach to Eliminate Disparities in Perinatal Morbidity and Mortality

Preventable disparities in health outcomes for women during the perinatal period are unacceptable. To successfully combat these inequities, it is important to identify their causes and use quality improvement approaches to eliminate them. Proposed are 5 quality and safety strategies to guide efforts to eliminate disparities and ensure equitable health care for all women and newborns: (1) apply a systems approach based on the Socio-Ecological Model, (2) identify root causes of disparities, (3) identify and eliminate strong but wrong routines, (4) use improvement and implementation science methods and tools, and (5) use data to guide the plan and track progress.