Eight health plans, Blue Plus, HealthPartners, Hennepin Health, South Country Health Alliance (South Country), Itasca Medical Care (IMCare), Medica, UnitedHealthcare (UHC), and UCare are continuing a collaboration that was started in 2021.

This performance improvement project (PIP) centers on ensuring a “healthy start” for Minnesota children by improving services provided to pregnant women and infants, focusing on reducing health disparities. Interventions will include working with a wide variety of partners to improve access and coordination of resources to help mothers and children get the right care at the right time and in the right setting.

The Collaborative intends to incorporate community-informed measures into the PIP processes for Prepaid Medical Assistance Program (PMAP) and MinnesotaCare members. Overall, community-informed measurement is having groups of people most negatively impacted by structural inequities engaged by collecting enrollee input on their interactions with the healthcare system and developing community-informed measures for the project.

Resources

Come Back to Get Caught Up Vaccination Blog for Parents
Routine childhood immunization rates have decreased throughout the pandemic. According to the Minnesota Department of Health, the rate of children up to date on vaccinations by age two has dropped significantly between 2019 and 2022. This leaves children vulnerable to preventable diseases and puts Minnesota at risk for outbreaks like measles and polio, like other areas of the country are experiencing.
This blog, developed by the Minnesota Medicaid health plans in collaboration with the MN Council of Health Plans, explains to parents the importance of ensuring children are up to date and gives an overview of the immunizations recommended by age two. Parents can read or listen to the information in English, Hmong, Somali, or Spanish.

Help Me Connect
A navigator connecting expectant families, families with young children (birth – 8 years old), and those working with families to services in their local communities that support healthy child development and family well-being.

Upcoming webinars

Help Me Connect to Early Childhood and Family Support Resources
Thursday, January 16, 2025. Noon-1 p.m.
Minnesota Help Me Connect is a free online navigation resource that helps expectant families, families with young children, and professionals working with families connect to services in their local communities that support healthy child development and family well-being. This webinar will take you through a live demonstration of what unique features the Help Me Connect website can offer.
Register >
More information >

Recorded webinars

Well Child Checks: Growth, Development, and Safety, Oh My!
Wednesday, November 13, 2024,
Krishnan Subrahmanian, MD, MPhil, FAAP
Early childhood assessment and intervention are crucial to a great start. This webinar provides an overview of screening and intervening in a child’s developmental progress.
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Maternal Health and Inclusive Communication
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
Haley Brickner, Health Equity Coordinator, Minnesota Medical Association
Language is powerful. Words can either promote respect and inclusion or perpetuate harm and inequality. The webinar addresses inclusive communication to ensure that all expecting and new mothers receive respectful and comprehensive care. The webinar will equip participants with valuable knowledge and tools to address health disparities and foster a supportive environment with enhanced communication skills.
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Alcohol Use and Pregnancy: The Importance of Screening and Brief Intervention
Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Kendra Gludt, MPH, is the Director of National Programs at Proof Alliance
This webinar presents the need for prenatal alcohol exposure screening and brief intervention and offers guidance on having challenging conversations about drinking alcohol during pregnancy in a non-stigmatizing manner.
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Legal Implications of Perinatal Substance Use
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Dr. Cresta Jones, MD, University of Minnesota
This webinar reviews current state and federal statutes affecting patients affected by perinatal substance use and substance use disorders, a 2021 statute change that affects perinatal substance use reporting, and explores best practices for perinatal care in the context of current state and federal statutes.
Recording >
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Doulas 101: A Valuable Part of the Care Team – How Doulas Support a Healthy Pregnancy
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Birth doulas are non-medical professionals who provide informational, emotional, and physical support during pregnancy and childbirth. Studies show that women who use doulas have improved outcomes for themselves and their babies, including shorter labors, fewer C-sections, fewer low birthweight babies, and higher breastfeeding initiation. Given the disparities in birth outcomes for people of color, doulas can be especially beneficial for BIPOC women.
Doulas can be a valuable part of a woman’s health care team and in Minnesota can be reimbursed by Medicaid, but they are underutilized for those at highest risk who could benefit the most. This recorded webinar describes the value doulas can bring, what doulas do and do not do, and shares strategies for integrating doulas into the prenatal care team to support women. Hear examples of how doulas have positively impacted birth experiences.
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Achieving Health Equity: Tools to Move Forward
Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Clinicians and other maternal and child health providers are increasingly aware of and able to identify health inequities in their work. However, they often struggle with how to move from knowledge to action and take tangible steps toward dismantling medical racism from their position in the field. In this webinar, participants will learn meaningful tools to eliminate health inequities in their own work and organizations.
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Disparities in Childhood Health
Wednesday, July 28, 2021
Minnesota is one of the healthiest places to live in the U.S. Despite that, health disparities negatively impact our communities of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), even prior to birth. Black/African American and American Indian children are especially impacted by these disparities. For example, immunization rates for Black/African American children at age 2 are over 26 points lower than white children in Minnesota. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these inequities.

This webinar will look at disparities in childhood health such as immunizations and well childcare. Clinicians and public health entities have a role in finding solutions to improving these gaps in care. Doctors Jason Maxwell and Andrea Singh share what works for them with their patients and some of the strategies they have used to try to bridge this gap. They discuss what they have learned from their patients, how we can work together and with BIPOC families to better serve the children in our care, and how to have these discussions with families.
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Racism’s Roots in Medicine & How Implicit Bias Impacts Care
Wednesday, April 7, 2021
Implicit biases are associations outside of a person’s conscious awareness that lead to a negative evaluation of another person on the basis of irrelevant characteristics such as race or gender. During this presentation, clinicians will learn about how healthcare professionals display implicit biases towards patients, the impact these biases have on patient experience and outcomes, and how to begin to address their own biases to provide better care.
Recording >
More information >
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Health Plan Performance Improvement Projects (PIPs)

Minnesota health plans that offer publicly subsidized health care programs implement performance improvement projects (PIP) to help improve the health of public program members and to reduce disparities for low-income Minnesotans. The projects have covered a wide range of health topics identified as priorities for improvement, including preventive care, chronic illnesses management, and transitions in care.
Projects with resources currently available:

Contact information

For more information on how your organization and Stratis Health can work together, please contact Karla Weng, director, program management, 952-853-8570, or Nicole Gackstetter, program manager, 952-853-8512.