New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative

The NM Perinatal Collaborative is a nonprofit, multidisciplinary coalition of stakeholders seeking to improve the health of New Mexico’s women, infants and birthing families through the identification and sharing of best practices with perinatal care providers and hospitals statewide.

In 2016, NIRH partnered with the New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Southwest Women’s Law Center, and Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United) to increase access to LARC while preventing coercion. By assessing the current state of LARC access in rural New Mexico and specifically among Native women, improving training, mentoring, and educational materials for health care providers, and advocating for administrative policy change that will address inadequate LARC reimbursement, the coalition is eliminating barriers to LARC across the state, with a specific focus on underserved populations NIRH supports its LARC partners by offering technical assistance as needed, linking their work to state and national trends and best practices, and lifting up their successes and lessons learned to share with the field. Three years after New Mexico’s Human Services Department created a mechanism for providers to get Medicaid reimbursement for providing LARCs immediately postpartum, only one hospital — the University of New Mexico — has consistently offered this service. The New Mexico Perinatal Collaborative (NMPC) used a two-part strategy to increase the number of hospitals offering this immediate postpartum contraceptive option. This includes developing a postpartum LARC toolkit specific to New Mexico, including information on counseling, billing, and pharmacy ordering and stocking and working directly with three to five New Mexico hospitals to implement postpartum LARC provision, engaging key stakeholders to overcome operational barriers, and facilitating training opportunities for providers and staff.