Using a Learning Collaborative to Develop Implementation Guides to Address the Maternal Health Crisis in the US

Background: Delay between generating evidence and integrating it into practice poses a significant barrier to improving population health, as the “know-do” gap prevents or postpones positive impacts of interventions. One strategy researchers, practitioners, and partners can utilize to increase the timeliness of intervention uptake is to create implementation guides. Implementation guides describe the “how” of implementation best practices while also promoting knowledge translation. To contribute to implementation guide development, organizations can participate in Learning Collaboratives. Learning Collaboratives offer peer-to-peer support and connection, group learning, and collective insight into quality improvement cycles. In the United States, co-designing implementation guides with users is one way to address the maternal health crisis.Methods: The Maternal Health Learning and Innovation Center (MHLIC) partnered with four national maternal health organizations in a virtual Learning Collaborative during 2024. Qualitative and quantitative evaluation with Learning Collaboration participants occurred via Qualtrics following each individual session. At the final session, a cumulative evaluation was distributed. Results: Four implementation guides were developed. Through the process, members of each MCH organization identified the best practices to develop their implementation guides. The flexible approach enabled each of the organizations to co-design their process to develop the implementation guides. Universally, using co-design strategies and the inclusion of people with lived expertise as well as other researchers, practitioners, and partners was critical to the development of the implementation guides. Conclusions: Using a Learning Collaborative to support organizations in co-creating and co-designing implementation guides - tailored to the needs of their communities and partners, and communities – presents an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of evidence-informed, emerging, and promising practices.