The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative, part of the Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) Expansion Project, is a hospital and community-based effort to improve outcomes for mothers and newborns impacted by substance exposure, with a specific focus on Opioid Use Disorder.

The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative will emphasize care that maintains the mother-baby dyad throughout the hospital stay and will also address treatment and prevention of substance exposure during and after pregnancy. 

Key components of this initiative include:

  • ​An interactive online toolkit for maternal and newborn care providers on perinatal substance exposure developed by a multidisciplinary task force of maternal and newborn healthcare experts from across California
  • Expert-led quality improvement collaboratives to support implementation of toolkit best practices, for hospitals in selected counties across Northern, Central and Southern California
  • Tools and resources for collecting and reporting data to support quality improvement
  • Mobilization and support for public and private partners across the state
  • A network of other states that have implemented the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health National Collaborative Opioid Bundle 

 

The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Toolkit

Access the Interactive Online Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Toolkit

The interactive online toolkit shares best practices across the care continuum for screening, assessment and level of care determination; treatment; transition of care; and education. Best practices are organized both by topic area and the type of practice setting: outpatient, labor and delivery and nursery-NICU. Key themes of the toolkit include:

  • Every pregnant woman/person should be screened
  • Every pregnant woman/person with opioid use disorder (OUD) should be on Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT)
  • Providers should encourage non-pharmacologic treatment for neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) where appropriate based on increasing evidence demonstrating its superiority
  • Moms/birthing people and babies should receive support to keep them together

 

Funding Acknowledgement

CMQCC and CPQCC jointly published this toolkit in collaboration with Health Management Associates (HMA). The Mother & Baby Substance Exposure Initiative is funded by the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) as part of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response grant.