Over the past 30 years we have come to understand that health and well-being are largely determined by social determinants of health — race, ethnicity, income, immigration status, and the environments where people live, work, and play. Neonatal care providers can and must address these social determinants of health to improve health equity, so everyone has a fair and just  opportunity to be as healthy as possible. Health equity is essential to quality improvement and is part of the framework utilized by teams participating in Vermont Oxford Network quality improvement collaboratives.

“Follow through” is a comprehensive approach to address health equity that begins before birth and continues into childhood involving health professionals, families, and communities as partners to meet the social as well as medical needs of infants and families. To help individuals and neonatal care teams learn how to follow through, Vermont Oxford Network developed a list of Potentially Better Practices. We refer to these improvement ideas as Potentially Better Practices (PBPs) rather than “better” or “best” practices to indicate that no practice is better or best until it is adapted, tested, and shown to work in the local context.

To help teams follow through, Vermont Oxford Network offered a competitive grant program for members participating in NICQ or iNICQ to develop innovative examples that will spread through our community of practice.