Practice Change
Starts With You
Colorado Hospital Substance Exposed Newborns Collaborative
The CHoSEN Collaborative is an effort to increase consistency in implementation of best practice in the identification of and response to newborns prenatally exposed to substances throughout the Rocky Mountain region.
The cornerstone initiative of the CHoSEN Collaborative is focused on quality improvement. Known as “CHoSEN QIC,” this work is built around multidisciplinary hospital-based improvement teams working collaboratively to achieve measurable improvements.
Perinatal substance use is a major public health concern in Colorado and throughout the Rocky Mountain region.
Cases of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) in Colorado have increased by 120 percent from 2011 to 2016 based on hospital discharge coding data.1
The impact of prenatal exposure to alcohol or other drugs can include poor birth outcomes such as:
- low birth weight,
- preterm delivery,
- drug withdrawal, and
- longer term cognitive, behavioral, and developmental delays.
According to the 2018 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System Data2:
- 14.4% of pregnant women drank alcohol during the last three months of pregnancy.
- 7.1% of pregnant women used tobacco during the last three months of pregnancy.
- 8.2% of pregnant women reported marijuana use any time during pregnancy.
- 28.3% of non pregnancy-related maternal deaths had toxic amounts of prescription or recreational drugs identified from 2008 to 2013.
The stakes are high for families.
- NAS rate: Heroin Response Work Group. (2018). Heroin in Colorado.
- Alcohol/Tobacco/MJ: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. (2016). 2016 Colorado Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System [data file].
