The Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance (ACHIA) recently published its first newsletter. Click here to read about current quality improvement initiatives, collaborative outcomes and more. This edition highlights pediatricians and family physicians across Alabama decreasing their patients’ risk of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) related cancers through the Prevent HPV Cancers Today! collaborative, as well as, the Healthy Active Living (HAL) collaborative and Help Me Grow Alabama. Check it out!
The Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance, in partnership with the University of Alabama at Birmingham Division of eLearning and Professional Studies and the UAB Division of Continuing Medical Education, has become the first organization in Alabama to offer performance improvement continuing medical education for exclusively practice-based physicians through its current developmental screening project, Help Me Grow/Project LAUNCH.
Unlike CME lectures, PI CME-approved activities are based on a learner’s participation in a three-stage project in which a physician: identifies an education need through a measure of his or her performance in practice, engages in education experiences to meet the need, integrates learning into patient care, and re-evaluates his or her performance.
ACHIA, which helps pediatric providers improve child health quality, recently developed an online quality improvement, or QI, collaborative that allows practice-based pediatricians and their nursing staffs to earn 20 CME credits as they abstract and review data, hold practice QI meetings, perform PI activities, and make sustainable practice changes to increase rates of developmental screening and referral of children with developmental delays.
Unlike CME lectures, PI CME-approved activities are based on a learner’s participation in a three-stage project in which a physician: identifies an education need through a measure of his or her performance in practice, engages in education experiences to meet the need, integrates learning into patient care, and re-evaluates his or her performance.
ACHIA, which helps pediatric providers improve child health quality, recently developed an online quality improvement, or QI, collaborative that allows practice-based pediatricians and their nursing staffs to earn 20 CME credits as they abstract and review data, hold practice QI meetings, perform PI activities, and make sustainable practice changes to increase rates of developmental screening and referral of children with developmental delays.
With a goal of aligning Alabama child health quality improvement initiatives under one sustainable umbrella, ten Alabama organizations have collaborated to establish a formal state child health improvement partnership (IP), the Alabama Child Health Improvement Alliance (ACHIA), which was accepted last month as a member of the National Improvement Partnership Network.
“In order to improve health outcomes for Alabama children, there is a need for a public-private child health improvement partnership that builds on existing efforts to provide quality child health care and brings in key partners such as universities, health care providers, health systems, government agencies, children’s advocacy groups, and health plans,” said Wes Stubblefield, MD, FAAP, Quality Improvement Chair for the Alabama Chapter-American Academy of Pediatrics (ALAAP).
In addition to an existing developmental screening project, ACHIA’s first initiative is the launch of a child obesity quality improvement collaborative this summer for primary care practices.
“In order to improve health outcomes for Alabama children, there is a need for a public-private child health improvement partnership that builds on existing efforts to provide quality child health care and brings in key partners such as universities, health care providers, health systems, government agencies, children’s advocacy groups, and health plans,” said Wes Stubblefield, MD, FAAP, Quality Improvement Chair for the Alabama Chapter-American Academy of Pediatrics (ALAAP).
In addition to an existing developmental screening project, ACHIA’s first initiative is the launch of a child obesity quality improvement collaborative this summer for primary care practices.