Cutting-Edge Practice

Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative Perinatal Mental Health Initiative

State/Jurisdiction: Illinois
Setting: Clinical Community
Population: Medical & Public Health Professionals Women & Maternal
Topic Area: Mental Health & Substance Use
NPMs:

The Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative is a nationally recognized statewide network of hospital teams, perinatal clinicians, patients, public health leaders, and policymakers committed to improving health care and outcomes for mothers and babies across Illinois. ILPQC works with almost all birthing hospitals across Illinois to implement quality improvement initiatives to improve maternal and infant health outcomes. Since its inception in 2012, ILPQC has successfully moved 10 initiatives into sustainability and is currently implementing two initiatives in the active phase.

Perinatal mental health and substance use disorders during pregnancy and postpartum continue to be public health issues. In 2022, the leading cause of pregnancy-related death in Illinois was substance use disorder, with mental health conditions in the top 10 of causes. Across the United States, 1 in 5 mothers experience depression or anxiety during pregnancy or postpartum. Additionally, less than 20% of pregnant and postpartum women are screened for depression, and less than 15% of women with maternal depression during pregnancy or postpartum receive treatment.

In response to this data and building upon the foundation of the previous Mothers and Newborns Affected by Opioids initiative, ILPQC launched the Perinatal Mental Health (PMH) initiative in May 2025. The PMH initiative supports birthing hospitals, OB units, Emergency Departments and outpatient OB care sites to improve care for pregnant and postpartum patients with perinatal mental health conditions and substance use disorders. ILPQC focuses on key strategies to help these care sites improve education on perinatal mental health conditions for clinical staff, patients and families, as well as improve screening, treatment and linkage to resources for mental health conditions during the perinatal period. To facilitate hospital work on these strategies, ILPQC holds monthly QI webinars and ensures hospital teams are submitting monthly QI data collection on hospital level and patient level measures. ILPQC also holds weekly QI office hours and meets one-on-one with teams to review data and provide support to improve processes. Additionally, ILPQC engages patient/community partners in QI initiatives by ensuring PMH teams have a patient partner on their QI team with lived PMH experience and including these patient partners in Obstetric Community Advisory Board meetings.




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Implementation Handout



CONTACT INFORMATION
Illinois Perinatal Quality Collaborative
Rebecca Ainis
rebecca.ainis@northwestern.edu
info@ilpqc.org

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