Global Perinatal Task Force on Quality Perinatal Care - Phase III

As healthcare systems reorganized to protect the quality, safety, rights and dignity of pregnant people during the global COVID-19 pandemic, we relied on the collective wisdom, expertise and lived experiences of members of the Global Perinatal Task Force on Quality Perinatal Care. We co-created an accessible, virtual platform to bring evidence-based guidance and pragmatic information to communities during periods of humanitarian crisis. The Quality Perinatal Services Hub (QPS Hub), is an interactive, platform that mobilizes resources and culture-matched strategies to uphold human rights and quality of care during pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and newborn care.

The goals of the QPS Hub are to:

  1. Mobilize, organize, annotate, and curate pragmatic guidance to support reallocation and mobilization of human and physical resources across birth settings, including virtual perinatal care and rapid response maternity units.
  2. Collate a set of human rights standards, instruments, policies, and accountability measures that are essential to ensure respectful, equitable, person-centred pregnancy and childbirth care during humanitarian crises and beyond.
  3. Serve as an open-source, interactive, accessible digital repository of documents, videos, and tools that support rapid implementation of best practices in perinatal services.
  4. Enable global partners and community stakeholders to collaborate as they disseminate the QPS Hub and resources across local and regional health systems.
  5. Deliver an integrated knowledge transfer package that considers high- to low-connectivity settings, languages, and modes of communication, ensuring relevance, utility, and accessibility.
  6. Compile and disseminate lessons learned on effective high quality person-centred care during and after pregnancy and birth when health systems are disrupted, "using" COVID-19 as an opportunity to highlight what needs to be done during new or re-emerging epidemics, conflict zones or natural disasters.

The Quality Perinatal Service Hub is now ready for pilot testing by community partners.