• Dr. Virginia Apgar is best known for her creation of the Apgar score that is used at all deliveries

• Mary Francis Hill Coley a midwife in Georgia who delivered ~3,000 babies in the early 1900s

• Dr. Helen Octavia Dickens was the first African American women to be admitted to the American College of Surgeons in 1950 and specialized in OB/GYN

• Carolyn Conant Van Blarcom authored the Obstetrical Nursing textbook in the 1920s.

• Given the role that mental health plays in perinatal care and outcomes, we celebrate Avel Louise Gordly, the first African American women to be elected to the Oregon senate and a powerful advocate for mental health. Ms. Gordly recently passed away, and tributes have flowed in celebrating the impact she had in Oregon.

And yet, most of the women who are to be celebrated this month are not well known names or chronicled in any online source, though are known by colleagues, friends and family because they quietly made a difference to families through their care and advocacy.

Who inspires you this month as we celebrate women in perinatal care?

Join us for a webinar to learn about improving ICD-10 coding for perinatal substance use disorder metrics

As teams across the state work to improve the care and outcomes for patients with substance use disorder (SUD) in pregnancy, reliable data is critical to know whether our efforts are making a difference. ICD10 coding is used for many metrics, and this webinar will focus on the key diagnosis codes for SUD and practical tips for both clinical documentation and coding practices to improve the accuracy and reliability of these codes.

Learn more and register here.

Naloxone Sprint

The four-month naloxone quality improvement sprint is underway! Seventeen teams across Oregon are enrolled to either implement or refine their existing processes for naloxone distribution to patients at risk of overdose on discharge from perinatal units. An Oregon Perinatal Naloxone Toolkit is now available on the OPC website for use by all. Focus areas for teams working in the sprint this month include optimizing patient education and confirming that reliable billing processes are in place. Since kickoff, teams have been sharing helpful order sets and lessons learned from initial implementation.

Mental health conditions, including SUD/overdose, are the leading causes of pregnancy related death in Oregon, and naloxone saves lives! All teams across the state are encouraged to review the toolkit and address local opportunities, if identified. This one-page patient education sheet addressing how to recognize and treat an overdose is included in the toolkit and can be added to after visit summaries or posted in clinics/hospitals.

Perinatal SUD Initiative

As a reminder, beginning September 2026 teams will have an opportunity to participate in a quality improvement initiative that will support implementation of the full Substance Use Disorders in Pregnancy and Postpartum Toolkit, addressing stigma and bias on perinatal units, universal screening for SUD on perinatal units, common pain points in labor and delivery, and so many other topics! Formal enrollment will open up this spring/summer, but teams and team members can complete the Intent to Participate Form now.

Perinatal SUD Tools

As a reminder, the following tools are now available to support local work to optimize care of patients with substance use disorders.

· The Perinatal SUD Toolkit has been updated to include additional resources and incorporate important feedback from experts.

· There are multiple audience-specific tools now available for behavioral health/treatment, clinics that provide prenatal/postpartum care, lactation, pediatric, peer support/doula/traditional health worker, and social work.

· There is a brief document with resources for additional team members such as anesthesia, emergency departments, IT/informatics, payor/CCOs, pharmacy and security.

· The OPC and OHA recently updated the 2018 Oregon Pregnancy and Opioids Workgroup Recommendations which will be available soon.

· Reminder: We have multiple videos available on the OPC website, including mothers in recovery sharing their experience with perinatal health care, as well as example screening and vignettes.

Onsite multidisciplinary simulations continue. Pat Scheans supported onsite simulation at almost half of participating sites in February, with all sites scheduled to be completed over the next couple of months. Each participating team also virtually presented their early learnings and goals for the first action period to one another, and it was an inspiring meeting! There were many themes and opportunities that came out of the meeting, including teams sharing debrief tools and surveys used to better understand staff needs. Teams review data together monthly and have seen a modest improvement in the prebrief process measure that we anticipate continuing.

Preeclampsia is the second leading underlying condition of severe maternal morbidity (behind hemorrhage) in the Oregon Maternal Data Center. Teams across Oregon completed a quality improvement initiative focused on severe preeclampsia in June 2025 which concluded with development of sustainability plans.

Twenty-four hospitals continue to track at least one of the two process measures in the Oregon Maternal Data Center, and we are excited to share that in Q3 2025:

· 80% of patients with severe hypertension received timely treatment in the hospital, and

· 78% had a postpartum follow up scheduled within three days

All of the tools and recommendations from participating sites during this initiative can be found on the OPC website (Severe Hypertension in Pregnancy & Postpartum).