Interconception Care and Safe Sleep: Adapting the IMPLICIT Toolkit for Pediatrics

A woman's health in the interconception period has an impact on birth outcomes. Pediatric visits offer a unique opportunity to provide interconception care (ICC). Our aim was to screen and provide interconception and safe sleep screening, counseling, and interventions for 50% of caregivers of children <2 years of age in a pediatric medical setting.

Two pediatric clinics implemented the March of Dimes' Interventions to Minimize Preterm and Low Birth Weight Infants Through Continuous Improvement Techniques (IMPLICIT) toolkit, in addition to standardized safe sleep assessments. A quality improvement learning collaborative was formed with a local "infant mortality champion" leading quality improvement efforts. Monthly webinars with the clinic teams reviewed project successes and challenges. Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications was used to document adaptations.

For each individual IMPLICIT domain, clinics screened and provided needed interventions for ICC and safe sleep in >50% of eligible encounters. Over the course of the quality improvement learning collaborative, the number of caregivers screened for at least 4 of the 5 IMPLICIT domains increased from 0% to 95%.

To successfully implement the IMPLICIT toolkit in pediatrics, adaptations were made to the existing model, which had previously been used in family medicine clinics. Pediatricians should consider providing ICC as an innovative way to impact infant mortality rates in their community. Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications can be used to systematically describe the adaptations needed to improve the fit of IMPLICIT in the pediatric clinic, understand the process of change and potential application to local context.