Community-Based Research
Our mission is centered on bringing user-experience to the forefront. In healthcare, those “users” are patients, providers, administrators, and others serving on the frontlines of their community’s healthcare infrastructure. We strive to champion input from these “users” through boots-on-the-ground research that convenes key stakeholders who are local to the community of interest.
In Missouri, 51.6 percent of counties were defined as maternity care deserts, compared to 32.6 percent in the US in 2024. This disproportionate lack of maternity care underscored the need for intervention to improve access to maternity care throughout the state. Despite their shared statehood, rural communities in Missouri possess unique geographic and cultural features, and thorough surveying of the state requires in-depth analysis of multiple different deserts spanning the state.
Our team drove to all four corners of Missouri, hosting in-person community forums in Miner, Chillicothe, Hannibal, and Joplin, to better understand the current state of maternity care in each desert and the unique pain points and barriers that hinder their improvement. Our research culminated in the collection of more than 1700 data points from maternity care patients, providers, and administrators across the state, and the creation of the 2024 Missouri Community Forums Report on Maternal Rural Health Care. This report was presented at the Missouri Perinatal Quality Collaborative’s fall 2024 summit and has been disseminated to hundreds of key stakeholders throughout the state.
One of the key findings from this report is a statewide weakness in communication and collaboration throughout the care journey of birthing patients. Three of the four communities, and 28% of participants statewide, labeled communication and collaboration as the greatest weakness (a larger percentage than any other category was mentioned).
Communication breakdown, information sharing, political barriers, and bureaucracy were identified as pain points contributing to a lack of communication and collaboration among health care systems. This work, among other findings, has prompted discussion around the development of a centralized maternal health resource and referral hub in the state of Missouri. Our team is currently in the process of researching and prototyping this idea with key stakeholders across the state.
To learn more about our work with maternal health leaders across the country, or to ideate around how to best leverage your state’s RHTP and other funding to improve maternity care outcomes, contact us below. We would love to chat!
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