WCHQ’s Maternal Health Innovation Project provides insights into how doulas are transforming maternal care throughout the state.  

Through interviews with patients and doulas, we heard inspiring stories of trust, advocacy, and empowerment. Doulas help bridge gaps in care by listening to patients, validating their experiences, and ensuring their voices are heard, especially in communities that face barriers to care.

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Key findings of this report include:

• Doulas serve an essential role in building trust between patients and providers.
• Doulas empower patients by teaching skills rather than merely doing tasks.
• When interacting with doulas, patients felt heard and understood, allowing them to advocate for themselves in their future care.
• The personalized support provided by doulas is vital, particularly in rural communities where access to providers can be limited by distance.  

Our findings highlight the vital role doulas play in providing emotional support, connecting families to essential community resources, and strengthening long-term well-being. Health systems can take action by integrating doulas into care teams, developing sustainable funding, and building partnerships with community-based organizations to expand access and equity statewide.

To read the full stories and learn more about how doulas are improving maternal health in Wisconsin, visit the Research page on our website. For questions, contact Renee Sutkay.

WCHQ has been awarded a $250,000 Momentum Grant from the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment (AHW) to expand our efforts to advance health equity and reduce disparities across the state.

Through this two-year project, we will use WCHQ’s trusted healthcare data to identify and share effective, evidence-based strategies that close gaps in care for underserved populations. By working alongside our member health systems, we will highlight approaches that are already demonstrating success and support others in implementing these proven strategies.

Our analysis will focus on key measures such as depression screening and diabetes management to understand which interventions lead to the most equitable outcomes. The insights gained through this project will help accelerate learning and improvement across Wisconsin’s healthcare community.

As our CEO, Dr. Gabrielle Rude, shared, “WCHQ’s mission has always focused on using transparent data and collaboration to improve health for everyone in Wisconsin. This grant allows us to build on that foundation by identifying what works and helping more systems achieve equitable results.”



The AHW Momentum Grant program supports projects that improve health across Wisconsin. Funding begins November 1, 2025, and continues for 24 months.

We invite healthcare professionals, leaders, and innovators to the Wisconsin Healthcare Quality Impact Assembly on November 14, to our premier event focused on driving quality improvement across our region.

Key Learning Objectives

• Understand how to harness measurements and data to showcase quality improvement work at your organization, with practical examples shared by WCHQ leaders and clinical experts.
• Gain insight into setting quality priorities within your organization using the quadruple aim framework—addressing population health, cost savings, patient experience, and provider experience, with an emphasis on equity and value as guiding principles.
• Learn how to apply data-driven approaches that measure what matters most in your specific community, ensuring that your quality initiatives are both meaningful and impactful.
• Explore the vital role WCHQ plays in uniting health systems and partners to foster collective action and raise the standard of care across Wisconsin.

Register today. Together, we can learn, collaborate, and ignite meaningful improvements across our state.

Our President & CEO, Dr. Gabrielle Rude recently joined The Learning Loop - UW Health's Learning Health System News Podcast for a conversation about what it takes to design and build a state-wide learning health system.

Tune in to hear their conversation, here.  

• Friday, November 14, 2025 - Wisconsin Healthcare Quality Impact Assembly
• Wednesday, November 19, 2025 - Not “Just Fatty Liver”: Closing the Gap in Metabolic Dysfunction Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) Detection and Management - Webinar

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