JJ Way® Easy Access Accreditation Platform
Project Overview
Challenge
CommonSense Childbirth Inc. is a non-profit organization that focuses on maternal health for marginalized women. They use a proprietary maternal health care model called The JJ Way® and operate an “Easy Access” Clinic which provides various services to the local community. They planned to scale access to The JJ Way® model of care by creating a program to accredit other clinics across the United States as “Easy Access” clinics but faced challenges in scaling the manual training process to more than a handful of clinics. This in turn limited the scope of geographical areas they could service as well as the amount of women in need that could access The JJ Way® model of care.
Outcome
A customized web application was developed for CommonSense Childbirth that includes a learning management system, accreditation workflow, scheduling, live consultations, In-app evaluations, metrics and reporting. This led to the following benefits for the organization:
- Increased capacity to handle a larger cohort size.
- Improved transparency into operations of clinics.
- Enhanced accuracy in reporting.
- Scalable online content delivery.
- Reduced scheduling errors.
Project Overview
Client
Commonsense Childbirth
Timeline
1 Year
Team Size
6 persons
The Client
CommonSense Childbirth Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1998 by Jennie Joseph with a mission to improve maternal and child health care. The organization’s work is centered on helping women and families have better birth experiences, and focuses on reducing rates of low birth weight, prematurity, infant mortality and maternal mortality, which are particularly high in minority and disadvantaged populations in the United States. The organization offers training and certification programs for healthcare professionals, para-professionals, maternity care systems and medical institutions to improve birth outcomes and save lives. Jennie Joseph speaks nationally and internationally to inspire change in maternal child health care systems and empower the birthing mother, father, family and community.
The JJ Way®
The JJ Way® is a model of care focused on eliminating disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes, specifically for communities with high needs. The program is centered around providing access to community-based maternity centers that are owned and operated by these communities. The key goals of the program are to increase the number of pregnancies that reach a gestation of 37 weeks or more, increase the number of newborns with a birth weight of 5lbs 8oz or more and improve bonding and breastfeeding success for mothers and their families. The program adopts a midwifery model of care, creating safe, accessible and professional environments to ensure all patients are treated with mutual respect and dignity.
Easy Access Clinics
CommonSense Childbirth Inc. operates “Easy Access” Clinics which provides affordable and accessible healthcare for pregnant and postpartum women who are uninsured, underinsured, low-income or indigent and who are at-risk for poor health outcomes due to lack of maternity medical home. These clinics focus on perinatal support along with prenatal, and postpartum care. They aim to help people who are in difficult positions with the rising costs and difficulty to acquire maternity insurance. They provide help with applying for Medicaid, social support and health navigation services for pregnant women. They are located in Orlando, Florida and promise to provide an access point for all.
The Challenge
CommonSense Childbirth Inc. is a non-profit organization with the primary goal of improving maternal health outcomes for marginalized women. The organization developed a proprietary maternal health care model called The JJ Way®, which is currently provided at an “Easy Access” Clinic, which offers a wide range of services to the local community. To broaden access to JJ Way® care, the organization had planned to establish a program to certify other clinics throughout the United States as “Easy Access” Clinics. However, they faced challenges in scaling the manual training process for more than just a few clinics. This limitation in scaling the training process meant that the organization had limited the scope of geographical areas they could service, and also the number of women in need that could access The JJ Way® model of care.
One of the main challenges faced by CommonSense Childbirth Inc. in scaling the manual training process was the lack of an efficient and reliable system for tracking the progress of the training and accreditation program. It was also difficult to schedule in-person and online sessions, collect data from clinics, and provide reports and data to funders and donors. Additionally, the manual process made it difficult for the organization to efficiently monitor and evaluate the progress of the program, which in turn restricted their ability to expand and reach more communities.
The Approach
To solve the challenges several key steps were taken to ensure an optimal outcome was achieved. These steps included design and discovery, planning, development and deployment.
- Design and Discovery: The first phase of the project is design and discovery. During this phase, we worked closely with the client to gather requirements, understand their objectives and goals, and identify the key features and functionalities that would be required for the web platform. We conducted stakeholder interviews, and user research to understand user needs and workflows. From that we created wireframes and mock-ups of the platform to help the client visualize the final product.
- Planning: Once the design and discovery phase was complete, we consulted and worked with the client to plan and prioritize the development of the web platform. This phase included creating detailed project plans, identifying the resources needed for the project, and determining the timelines for delivery.
- Development: During this phase our team of developers designed, built, and tested the web platform. During this phase we worked in 2 weeks sprints with regular demos to ensure the client got to consistently provide feedback and review the progress of the product.
- Deployment: During this phase, we worked with the client to deploy the web platform to a production environment, and provided training and support to ensure that the client was able to effectively use and maintain the platform. This includes data migration, configuring hosting, and making sure the platform is stable.
The Solution
This new web application has brought several benefits for the organization, the first being increased capacity to handle a larger cohort size (up to 10). The web application allows the organization to train and accredit more clinics efficiently and effectively, which enables them to reach more women in need. The application also improves transparency into the operations of clinics, by providing real-time tracking of progress and data collection. This allows the organization to monitor the performance of clinics and assess the effectiveness of The JJ Way® model of care over years to come.
Lastly, the web application has reduced scheduling errors and improves the coordination of training sessions which can lead to reduced confusion and decreased administrative burden. This new web application has been designed to streamline The JJ Way® training process, increase the organization’s capacity and improve the overall performance of the program.
Conclusion
The web application has been a significant tool for CommonSense Childbirth, it has provided the organization with the ability to centralize, streamline and scale their programs and increase the impact of The JJ Way® model of care all over the country and eventually the world.
