The Newborn Admission Temperature (NAT) Project aims to improve the proportion of newborn babies with normal temperatures. We completed more than one year of data collection and early this fall released example evidence-based guidelines that hospitals can choose to use.
The NAT project has also produced benefits for implementing future QI projects and initiatives. For example, we asked hospitals to rate the statement “Being part of the NAT project helps us better report data by race and ethnicity.”
The proportion of hospitals that reported that their participation in the NAT project is helping them improve reporting of data stratified by race and ethnicity increase over the course of the initiative. In the first two data reporting cycles, only about one third (33-38%) of hospitals agreed with this statement, compared to nearly half (47%) of hospitals by the most recent data reporting cycle. (Click here to view the graph.)
Looking at the critical factors and conditions (challenges or barriers) that ensure effective practices are carried out and sustained for future practices is part of implementation science and it is equally as important as improving health outcomes for several reasons:
Routinely reporting race/ethnicity through the NAT project might have a trickle-down effect as hospitals begin to build these processes within their own systems and projects; and
The NAT project is the first TCHMB project that has documented outcomes by race and ethnicity and has set the stage for future TCHMB projects to do the same. This is a strategy that cannot be understated given the disparities in maternal and neonatal outcomes in Texas.
Texas’ perinatal population is diverse and rapidly growing, and despite considerable improvement efforts, disparities in several key perinatal health indicators persist or have widened. Black mothers in Texas had higher rates of severe maternal mortality (SMM) than mothers of any other race or ethnic group over the past decade, and this disparity has widened since 2016.
High-quality, stratified data including race and ethnicity, at a minimum, can help reveal how different subpopulations are faring and track efforts to advance equity in health care and health outcomes. In this way, through its data collection process and through the participation of hospitals, the NAT project is breaking barriers while also working to eliminate disparities in perinatal health outcomes.
Read more about the new CDC grant that will work towards eliminating disparities in Texas.