Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award
Important Changes to Baby Friendly USA have inspired us!
“A vast amount of research supports the guidelines of the Baby Friendly USA Hospital Initiative as an effective approach for increasing breastfeeding rates through the 10 steps to successful breastfeeding. In support of Baby Friendly USA the Foundation For Breastfeeding in Collaboration with Florida Breastfeeding Coalition have designed the Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award program to reward birthing facilities in the state of Florida for improving hospital maternity care and infant feeding practices based on the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding.”
Click HERE to learn more about the origins of the Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award established in 2012.
Benefits:
Benefits of participating in the Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award Program include:
- Improving the health of the mother-baby dyad
- Increasing patient satisfaction
- Meets Joint Commission Core measures for exclusive breastfeeding
- Recognition as a facility that provides evidence based maternity care
- Free marketing to the public about your efforts
- Publicly meeting the Call to Action from the Surgeon General
- Improving CDC mPinc results for your facility
- Meets the Healthy People 2020 Goal for exclusive breastfeeding in your hospital
Requirements:
Our program follows the 4-D Pathway of Baby-Friendly USA because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recognizes Baby-Friendly as the optimal quality in evidence-based maternity care and infant feeding practices. The project awards one STAR for each application pathway that is completed. Maternity hospitals and birthing centers can receive up to four STARS through FBC’s project with the fifth STAR reserved for hospitals who become designated Baby Friendly. Hospitals must register and complete the 4-D pathway designed by BABY FRIENDLY USA to receive the Fifth Star*
Click HERE to download and print Star Award Requirements pdf.
Star 1 requirements:
- Obtain CEO letter of support
- Complete BabyFriendlyUSASelfAppraisalTool addressing the UNICEF ten steps to successful breastfeeding
Star 2 requirements:
- Develop interdisciplinary team to actively engage in oversight of quality care and ensures the quality goals are achieved.
- Develop Baby-Friendly Hospital Work Plan
- Develop hospital breastfeeding policy that reflects the UNICEF Ten Steps to Breastfeeding
- Identify training curriculum and plan for training staff
- Identify and/or develop prenatal teaching plans
- Identify core measures, benchmarks and data collection plan
Star 3 requirements:
- Implementation of plan, education and use of evidence-based clinical practices in the care of maternity patients: with particular attention to those steps targeted by UNICEF.
- Ensure efficiency: minimize inappropriate variations, barriers and/or inconsistencies in plan.
- Establish a culture and leadership style that encourages evidence based maternity care as reflected in UNICEF Ten-Steps.
- Implement the use of data collection plan and effectively communicate results to all administration and staff. Ensure alignment with Baby-Friendly
- USA implementation guidance.
Star 4 requirements:
- This is for facilities who have not yet reached designation through Baby-Friendly USA but have implemented all ten steps. Facilities will need to provide pre-implementation data (baseline data) and three months of data collected post implementation.
- Define and routinely monitor performance measures for each of the ten steps defined by UNICEF (listed below) for the full range of service provided by Maternity Care.
Star 5 requirements:
- Achieve Designation through site visit by Baby-Friendly USA *
* Only those hospitals that do actually apply to Baby-Friendly USA and receive the Baby-Friendly Hospital designation will be awarded five stars by Florida Breastfeeding Coalition. The Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award does not replace Baby Friendly USA pathway to designation. Hospitals and birthing centers must apply and complete the 4-D pathway with Baby Friendly USA to become designated a Baby-Friendly Hospital.
Click on any Star Award below to begin application process.
Locate recipients of the Florida Quest for Quality Maternity Care Award below
Regions
Additional Help and Support
Click image for downloadable PDF
- For additional help email:
- Heidi – Agostinhofoundationforbreastfeeding@gmail.com
- Review the FBC resource list for improved maternity and infant feeding practices above.
- Visit the Florida Department of Health Healthiest Weight Baby Steps to Baby Friendly webpage
“The Florida Department of Health fully supports breastfeeding as a vital health activity…We commend all hospitals and health care facilities that are working toward practicing the WHO/UNICEF Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding and encourage others to adopt these practices so that all mothers and newborns achieve the best health possible.” – Florida State Surgeon General and Secretary of Health Dr. John Armstrong
