All Care is Brain Care
Promoting Parental Wellbeing and Health Equity
About this VON QI Collaborative Topic
Neonatal care providers have the opportunity to identify social determinants of health and other stressors that are unique to the family experience in the NICU. With the process of “Follow Through” – a comprehensive approach that begins before birth and continues into childhood – health professionals, families, and communities can partner to meet the social, mental, and medical needs of infants and families in an effort to achieve health equitable wellness.
In this topic group of the All Care is Brain Care collaborative, teams will learn from expert faculty and each other to explore and implement evidence-based potentially better practices through structured quality improvement processes to:
- screen for social determinants of health
- screen for mental health
- connect families with available resources
- promote a culture of equity
- establish equity-related never events
- support parental wellbeing and prepare families for life beyond the NICU
Is this topic right for your center?
Use these support materials to decide on your improvement topic and make the case for participating in the collaborative.
All Care is Brain Care QI Collaborative
“Promoting Parental Wellbeing and Health Equity” is a topic area of focus for teams participating in the 2025 All Care is Brain Care collaborative. Participating teams choose a topic most relevant for their center, and then choose a membership level: NICQ or iNICQ.
All teams in either NICQ or iNICQ will benefit from:
- Webinars led by experts in the topic (5-6 per year)
- Interactive toolkits of potentially better practices and evidence-based change ideas
- Recorded webinars and toolkits from other topic areas in All Care is Brain Care
- Quality Improvement Foundations online course for all staff
- CME/CNE for all webinars and courses (including all videos from other topic areas in the collaborative)
- MOC Part 4 credits for physicians (with submission of a poster)
Newborn Improvement Collaborative for Quality
Includes: Small group collaboration and continuous feedback/coaching from colleagues and faculty, dedicated faculty team, additional “homeroom” meetings, in-person meetings (February 2025, Spring 2026, and two days at the Quality Congress in Fall 2026).
To join NICQ or request more information, contact John Lester for more information.
iNICQ: Internet-Based Newborn Improvement Collaborative for Quality
Includes: Virtual collaboration with topical community throughout the year and a 1-day in-person meeting at the 2026 Quality Congress.
Join as a Quality Circle member and participate in iNICQ, or contact Pam Ford, Program Coordinator, for more information.
Faculty
Janelle Bainter
Family Leader: Janelle Bainter is the March of Dimes NICU Family Support Coordinator at the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital at Maine Medical Center, a role she has had for 13 years. She has a Master’s degree in social work from St. Louis University and is the parent of 3 children, one of whom was born at 28 weeks.
Gaby Cordova Ramos, MD
Content Lead: Dr. Gaby Cordova Ramos is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine and a clinical neonatologist at Boston Medical Center. Her research focuses on developing perinatal care innovations to enhance the health and well-being of low-income families with high-risk infants. Dr. Cordova Ramos investigates the impact of social care interventions on critical caregiving practices, including breastfeeding, safe sleep, and skin-to-skin contact, while promoting family engagement in the NICU.
Jim Gray, MD, MS
Clinical Translator: Dr. Jim Gray, Professor of Pediatrics, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, is a board-certified neonatologist. Dr. Gray has extensive experience with the evaluation of neonatal care and the integration of evolving information technologies into the assessment and provision of care.
Deb Sims
Quality Leader: Deb Sims has been participating in VON’s improvement collaboratives for over twenty-five years as both a unit QI coordinator and as faculty for VON. After completing her PhD in 2020, she left the bedside and has been working as an adjunct professor for the University of Providence and as faculty for VON, most recently leading teams in how to include parents in their QI work through training in Experienced-Based Co-Design.
VON Award for Excellence in Quality Improvement
The annual VON Award for Excellence in Quality Improvement recognizes VON member teams who demonstrate dedication to our shared core values of quality improvement: measurement, evidence, families, equity, and collaboration.
Teams participating in the All Care is Brain Care collaborative (NICQ/iNICQ) are eligible to apply.
About VON Membership
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