May is Women’s Health Month, and at CIVHC, we are looking at the data and partnerships that drive meaningful improvements in health care for women across Colorado.
This year, we’re organizing our efforts around three central themes: maternal health, preventive care, and chronic conditions. For each topic, we’re highlighting tools, analyses, and partnerships that bring these into focus and, most importantly, help translate data into action.
Maternal Health
Maternal health is often discussed in parts: prenatal visits, delivery, and postpartum care. But the data tells a more continuous story that includes variations in cost, differences in care experiences, and opportunities to address disparities in access and care.
With our Shop for Care tool, users can explore maternal care and obstetric delivery pricing by facility, offering transparency into how cost of delivery varies across Colorado. This information can help inform important decisions for expecting families and highlight important trends in maternal health across the state. For example, insights into labor and delivery costs show that people delivering in Colorado’s mountain towns experience substantially higher costs. Access to this data is empowering and helpful for consumers planning a birth, but cost is only one piece of the puzzle.
Our perinatal autistic experience research adds another important dimension exploring how autistic individuals experience pregnancy and postpartum care. The findings highlight gaps in care and offer important insights into improving outcomes through early intervention and behavioral health system improvement.
Featured Partner:
The Colorado Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (CPCQC) focuses on improving quality of care for mothers and babies. CIVHC partnered with CPCQC to evaluate postpartum care and mental health in Colorado using CO APCD claims to understand the impacts, costs, and utilization of health care services during the perinatal period.
Preventive Care
Access to preventive care is a crucial component to improving cost of care and, more importantly, health outcomes. CIVHC has several reports and tools that can help identify access gaps and cost barriers to preventive care for women.
Our Shop for Care tool again plays a role here, offering cost insights for common preventive services including breast cancer screenings. This transparency in pricing can reduce barriers and help Coloradans make informed decisions about where to seek care.
The Community Dashboard also reveals breast cancer screening rates across Colorado, highlighting variation by county. These insights help identify gaps and allocate resources where they are most needed.
Featured Partner:
The Susan G. Komen Foundation is one of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to eliminating breast cancer. The Foundation is committed to saving lives by investing in research, supporting patients, and ensuring everyone has access to breast cancer care. Susan G. Komen Colorado partnered with CIVHC to use CO APCD data to better understand cost of care after breast cancer diagnosis.
Prevalence and Costs
Finally, we’re looking at how chronic conditions affect women across Colorado. Our Chronic Condition Spotlights, highlighting findings from the Chronic Conditions Analysis, offer insights into chronic disease prevalence and costs.
Several of these spotlights focus on conditions adversely impacting women, including breast cancer and heart disease, recognized as a leading cause of death among women. While these conditions are among the most significant drivers of health care utilization and spending, these spotlights also reveal opportunities for targeted intervention and improved care.
Featured Partner:
Through the Colorado Gynecologic Cancer Alliance, the Carol’s Wish financial navigation program helps under-resourced gynecologic cancer patients enroll in insurance plans, find ways to reduce out-of-pocket costs, and connect with financial support services. CIVHC partnered with the Colorado Gynecologic Cancer Alliance using the CO APCD to better understand the impact of Carol’s Wish services on out-of-pocket costs and access to care for program participants.
Through data and community partnerships, we remain committed to making health care data accessible, actionable, and meaningful.
If you have questions about the CO APCD or accessing data, please contact us at info@civhc.org.
