JPS launches new tool to help mothers, infants in Tarrant County. More hospitals to follow
Inside JPS Health Network’s auditorium over 50 nurses, physicians and JPS board members came to support its TeamBirth kickoff event Monday afternoon, Jan. 27.
TeamBirth is a communication system to provide better transparency among women, their medical providers and doulas during labor, delivery and postpartum. JPS will be the first of seven eventual hospitals in Tarrant County to officially launch the program in Texas. The model already exists in over 150 hospitals across the United States.
TeamBirth, alongside United Way’s Maternal Health Initiative, are aimed to address concerns about maternal mortality and health in Tarrant County.
According to the 2024 Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Biennial Report, Black women are 2.5 times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than white women in Texas.
Stephanie Carson-Henderson, chair of women’s and infants at JPS, told the crowd that TeamBirth will allow patients and their families to be active participants in their care because at JPS all voices matter.
“We believe that all women deserve respectful and equitable care,” Carson-Henderson said. “TeamBirth will be a tool that we will use here to give patients what they need and deserve the most, and that’s to be seen and to be heard.”
TeamBirth was developed and tested by Ariadne Labs, a joint center for health systems innovation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, both in Boston.
It focuses on two core components, a series of huddles with patients at key decision points during the labor, birth and postpartum period, and anchoring the information discussed during that huddle on a shared planning board that hangs in the patient’s room. The planning boards are the outline of structured communications among nurses, doctors and patients.
The system gives the patient a say in the process, which will be acknowledged by the staff.
Besides JPS, the other Tarrant County hospitals that will get TeamBirth are Baylor Scott and White All Saints Fort Worth, and multiple hospitals in the Texas Health Resources system, including Texas Health Fort Worth, Texas Health Southwest, Texas Health Arlington Memorial, Texas Health HEB and Texas Health Alliance.
There are two cohorts of hospitals that will launch the program; the first will launch this week and the second launching sometime in the future.
Mayor Mattie Parker praised TeamBirth and the nurses who will use it to help mothers during delivery. Parker mentioned the high maternal mortality rate among Black women in Texas, especially in Tarrant County.
Tarrant County had the fourth highest maternal mortality rate among Texas counties with at least 100,000 residents in 2019. Roughly 5.5 out of 1,000 women died during or shortly after giving birth, according to data from Tarrant County Public Health. Black women had higher infant mortality rates than all other race and ethnicity groups in Tarrant County.
This raised concerns and in 2022 the United Way was allocated $1.96 million from Tarrant County in American Rescue Plan Act funds to form a Maternal Health Initiative to train hospital staff and community-based doulas to ensure at-risk women of color have healthier pregnancies.
“I think that the way you care for your most vulnerable, the way you really think about those in labor delivery rooms right now, as we sit here, you’re changing their lives for the better and forever more, and they’re incredibly thankful,” Parker said.
Amber Weiseth, director of TeamBirth at Ariadne Labs, says TeamBirth provides a simple structure where mothers can be their best even at their most vulnerable moments.
“Everybody is here because they’re on mission, and they’re very attentive to the needs of the community,” Weiseth said to the Star-Telegram. “So this hospital, we’re very proud of them for their efforts, and we’re excited to be here to celebrate their launch.”
