#288 - The Future of Family-Centered Neonatal Care

Hello Friends 👋

In this special episode of The Incubator Podcast, Ben and Daphna welcome Dr. Malathi Balasundaram and Morgan Kowalski, key members of the Family-Centered Care (FCC) Task Force, to discuss the growing movement towards integrating families as active partners in neonatal care.

Dr. Balasundaram, a neonatologist and chair of the FCC Task Force, explains that family-centered care goes beyond simple parental involvement—it requires caregivers to be equal members of the NICU team, engaged in every stage from antenatal care to discharge and beyond. Despite decades of evidence proving its benefits, family-centered care is still inconsistently implemented in many NICUs. The FCC Task Force was created to bridge this gap, providing hospitals with the resources, mentorship, and support needed to build or strengthen their programs.

Morgan Kowalski, a former NICU parent turned program manager, shares her powerful personal experiences that shaped her advocacy. She describes how her active participation in her son’s care directly impacted his outcomes, underscoring the life-saving role of informed and engaged parents. She also highlights the Task Force’s rapid global growth, now spanning over 1,400 members across 46 countries, and the impact of its webinars, mentorship programs, and policy initiatives.

This episode sheds light on the urgent need for cultural and systemic change in neonatal care. As more hospitals recognize that parents are not visitors, but essential caregivers, the FCC Task Force continues to push for widespread adoption of family-centered policies that improve both infant and family outcomes.

Tune in to learn how this movement is revolutionizing NICU care and how you can be part of the change! 

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Short Bios:

Dr. Malathi Balasundaram: Dr. Malathi Balasundaram is a Clinical Professor at Stanford School of Medicine and an Attending Neonatologist at El Camino Health, Community Level III NICU where she serves as the NICU Family-Centered Care Committee Chair. She completed her Fellowship at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) and has been working at El Camino Health in their Community Level III NICU since 2015 where she has successfully implemented comprehensive Family-Centered Care. Her passion is to provide safe and quality neonatal care in a family integrated NICU setting, not only locally at El Camino Health, but in NICUs across the globe. She spearheaded and formed the international Family-Centered Care Taskforce by partnering with Trainees and Early Career Neonatologists (TECaN), and recruiting mentors, speakers, and Family Partners of diverse backgrounds and serves as Co-Chair. She is a Chair in statewide California Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative’s (CPQCC) Perinatal Quality Improvement Executive (PQIP) Quality Infrastructure Committee (QII) and a member of the PQIP Executive Panel.

Morgan Kowalski: Morgan Kowalski is a former NICU parent (Thomas, born at 25 weeks gestation) and a Family Partner at Golisano Children's Hospital NICU at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) with a focus on Quality Improvement. She has served in the Family Connection Program at URMC since 2020 and helped implement GCH NICU’s Small Baby Unit in 2021-23. She is a Vermont Oxford Network Family Partner and serves in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Family Partnership Network.

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The transcript of today's episode can be found below 👇

Ben Courchia MD (00:02.595)

Hello everybody, welcome back to the incubator podcast. are back this morning with a brand new interview. Daphna, how are you this morning?

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:09.326)

Well, I say I'm excited about all of our interviews, but obviously this one has been a long time coming. No, excitement.

Ben Courchia MD (00:15.097)

For the people who think you're faking it, you are in a constant state of excitement. To a level that annoys most of our team, by the way, because you're always happy and yeah. For the people who have seen the Trolls, the Trolls movie, you're like the Polly from the Troll. Poppy, there you go.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:22.126)

That, that's right. I know it can be exhausting.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:31.706)

Poppy, but yeah, I'll take it. I'll take it.

Ben Courchia MD (00:36.537)

And we have a very special episode scheduled for you all today. We are very proud and honored to welcome members of the FCC Task Force, the Family Centered Care Task Force. And we have on with us Dr. Malati Balasundaram. Malati, thank you for making time to be on with us today.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (00:38.884)

Mm -hmm.

Malathi (00:56.37)

Thank you, Ben and Daphna for your kind introduction and inviting me to join your amazing podcast. I'm a fan of your podcast and I listen to your podcast every day. And thank you for giving me company.

Ben Courchia MD (01:03.053)

Thank you for those kinds words . You are a clinical associate professor at Stanford School of Medicine. You're an attending neonatologist and you're the chair of the Family -Centered Task Force Committee. And you are joined today by Morgan Kowalski. Morgan, good morning and welcome to the show.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (01:10.792)

Thanks.

Morgan Kowalski (01:28.046)

Good morning, thank you for having me. I feel like this is my 15 minutes of fame. I'm also super excited to be here.

Ben Courchia MD (01:32.537)

Very happy to have you on. You are calling us today from the state of New York. You are a program manager and a family partner at Golisano Children's Hospital, NICU, at the University of Rochester Medical Center. And we're very excited to talk to you guys about the Family Center Care Task Force. I would say that my first question for, I guess for you, Malati, maybe you can take this on.

is what is family -centered care? What does that term really denote?

Malathi (02:09.542)

Yeah, sure, Ben. Family -centered care is like caregivers or parents are active care, active and engaged team members. So throughout their NICU journey. So if you go and then ask any unit and then they say, yeah, we are implementing family -centered care. But when you see that they are actually implementing part of it. Yeah, they are tracking the skin to skincare. That is not only the family -centered care. So you have to start from the antipartum and NICU and discharge and beyond.

So you have to make sure the family members and caregivers are actively involved in the care throughout the NICU journey. So that's the definition of family -centered care. You want to add anything to the deaf now?

Ben Courchia MD (02:50.1)

and

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (02:53.678)

Yeah, no, I agree. think it's seeing family members, particularly parents, as critical members of our NICU team is equal members, in some cases more important members than our clinical team, but at least equal partners in the care of the symphony.

Ben Courchia MD (03:15.127)

And what's interesting to me is that whenever we coin a term for something, it means that it needs to be identified and sort of needs to be recognized. However, it does feel like family -centered care should be natural, quote unquote, or maybe should be the norm. So can you tell us a little bit about what is the family -centered care task force and why is there even a need to shine a light on this aspect of neonatal care, considering how

common sense almost, it feels like based on the description you've given.

Malathi (03:46.79)

Yeah, it's a common sense is also evidence out there. It's three decades ago, even long time back. So the family centered care is improving a family outcome and infant outcomes. So it's exist, but it's not reaching to the bedside. So of course there are challenges involved and barriers. You have to change your mindset of.

mentor to the families and engaging them in their infant's care. So all those things involves with the barriers and challenges. So this family centered task force, our mission is to help the centers if they already have a program in place, strengthen their program, or if they don't have one, help them to build the family centered care program. So why we formed this, you know, several parent organization or

conferences exist to improve the family -centered care activities. And we go to these conferences and listen about this and then, okay, we are excited and we want to improve and we come back to the unit, then everything stops. The momentum stops and then we are struggling because we have clinical duties and we have other commitment and family commitment. So it's not happening at the bedside. So what we are trying to achieve here is we are just trying to keep that momentum going.

Like how do we do it throughout the year? That's the goal of this Family Centered Care Task Force.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (05:16.27)

You're muted, Ben.

Ben Courchia MD (05:16.633)

So yeah, I know, I'm sorry. It happens all the time. But my last question for you then, Morgan, who you are an IQ parent. And so I'm just wondering if your journey towards your role as a program manager, as a parent advocate, as a family partner with the FCC task force really stems from an experience in the NICU where you were actively involved.

Morgan Kowalski (05:30.232)

Mm -hmm.

Ben Courchia MD (05:43.797)

in the team and you were actually part of a unit that practiced along those lines or maybe from an experience where you were not so much an active member of the team that then prompted you to seek out more about the family -centered care model.

Morgan Kowalski (06:01.358)

Thank you for that question. We didn't have a family centered care committee or patient family advisory council in my local NICU when I was there with my son who was inpatient. He was born at 25 and one and he was my first child. had no clue what I was doing. didn't even know that the NICU existed. And

It was really one physician. He was our first rounding neonatologist, like our first attending neo. And I think my son, Tommy, was maybe two days old and he was evaluating him. And this neonatologist asked me, did his abdomen look like this yesterday or earlier today? And I took a look and I said, no, it didn't. It's very red now. It didn't look like that before.

And it turns out that we were able to catch some late stage cellulitis, early sepsis, an infection in his umbilical line because I was able to give that, was there and able to give that feedback. And I remember that physician saying to me, this is what you can be doing right now. You are the only person sitting here at this bedside

12 hours, 13 hours, 14 hours a day. And you've got eyes on him and we need you to advocate for him. And I'm sure that that labeled me as a difficult parent to some providers. But it was like, I didn't need to hear anything else. I got a notebook, I got a preemie textbook from the library in the hospital. And I sat in on rounds every single morning.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (07:40.612)

Hmm.

Morgan Kowalski (07:55.042)

I think I was kind of doing family led rounds before they were a thing, which, know, not everybody liked, but, I, I feel that there were a few situations along my son's journey where my empowerment as a part of the care team made the difference in his outcome and in his, in his success. And I'll, I'll tell you a quick, you know, one that stands out to me quite a bit is

We were doing skin to skin on the jet ventilator. was right before a PDA ligation. And my son extubated on the jet and ended up coding. we worked on him. we, I stood there while physicians worked on him for probably, you know, 45, 50 minutes. And at the very last second, you know, I remember

the main respiratory therapist was pregnant. So she was kind of in and out while like the x -rays were being taken to see, you know, how his lungs were progressing, whether they were re -inflating. And I remember like she had to step out and the attending physician was like, let's try one last breathing tube. But nobody could recall the size and the RT wasn't right there. The other ones were in the trash. So either the nurse was gonna have to boot up the computer in this.

emergency moment and figure out what size the breathing tube was, or somebody was going to have to put their hand in the trash can. And I knew what the size was because I was empowered to pay attention and to know those things. And so I was able to call out the size of the tube. was a three. They re intubated him and ultimately that moment saved his life in that situation. So I feel incredibly passionate.

Ben Courchia MD (09:41.326)

Wow.

Morgan Kowalski (09:46.016)

about family -centered care. I didn't realize that that's what it was called at that time and in that moment. I really just thought it was being a parent advocate, and I did feel like that was kind of outside protocol. It wasn't the norm. And so I think it's a really, really important thing that we need to be doing.

Ben Courchia MD (10:07.435)

and you didn't have to go fish any tubes in the trash can.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (10:10.784)

Thankfully.

Morgan Kowalski (10:10.976)

No one had to their hands in the trash can, so I saved everybody from that too.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (10:13.548)

I love that. Well, I mean, I really appreciate your candor and sharing your story and your journey with us. And I can't help but feel like your story, your dynamic with your team is still kind of leaps and bounds ahead of where most units are in family -centered care. And maybe Malati, you can speak a little bit to...

Where are we? What is the state of family centered care? Let's say in the United States. So I'll sprinkle in some facts about the family centered care task where it is an international task force. We have multiple countries involved, but most of our listeners are here in the US. So US, Canada, we do have people all over. So tell us about the state of kind of family centered care, knowing that different hospital systems, different countries may be.

farther ahead.

Malathi (11:09.916)

Yeah. So in US, we are far behind. There's no doubt about it. European countries, they are very advanced. They have a couple of care, and then they include the families from the beginning. so far at US, so I wanted to, I want to give a little background about how it all started. So it's just a simple, quick survey that I put together when I joined the TCAN, Trainees and Early Career Neonatologist, a summer QI group.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (11:13.188)

Hmm.

Malathi (11:37.412)

And so I just asked them, do you have a, center have any family centered care committee or anyone group oversees the family centered care activities? So that's a simple survey, two question survey. That's how everything started. And so the reason I started this, because in my local NICU, where I work level three NICU, I'm a Stanford faculty, but we work at a level three NICU and we implemented a comprehensive family centered care program.

So I just wanted to see if there is anything similar program exist out there. That's the reason I created the survey and I asked those group and surprised to hear and I expanded that survey to clinical leaders group and expanded the survey to the other committee community. So that's how it all started. So out of 48 responses and 65 % of the NICUs, they don't have a family -centered care committee.

So only 35, they have some kind of a group that oversees the family centered care activities. And I thought if we were able to build our family centered care committee in my local NICU, is there an opportunity for me to replicate this work to the other centers? Can we build the mentorship model, our small group model, or having some educational webinars to change the culture? So that's how everything started in February of 2022.

And Daphna, you are a founding member of this task force and you are part of the TECAN survey and you filled out that survey. And so we started with the 50 members in early February of 2022. And so now Morgan can give the statistics. I think she is the one keeps everything organized. And I think we are like more than 1300 members internationally.

Morgan Kowalski (13:27.534)

Yeah. And I was going to say when I started as a program manager back in end of May, beginning of June of 2023, I think we were at like less than 500 members, 14 countries, 36 U .S. states. I updated membership last night. We are almost at 1400 members across 48 of 50 U .S. states in Puerto Rico. We're in eight of the 10 Canadian provinces and

we reach 46 countries across the world. So that is a huge, huge jump in just a short year. And I think that the really neat thing about the Family Centered Care Task Force is it's such a niche organization that our members are very actively engaged. It's not really like a one towing kind of membership. It's people are here because this is important to them.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (13:59.382)

Mm -hmm. Amazing.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:17.348)

Mm -hmm.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:26.03)

Yeah, I love that. And thank you, yes, for mentioning, because people should know I'm one of the committee chairs, mostly managing kind of our social media stuff. But truthfully, I want to highlight what you said, Morgan, because the Family Center Care Task Force is really a two -woman show. Malati, you had the vision, and I know Morgan has been kind of supporting you with so much logistics.

Morgan Kowalski (14:36.974)

It was a fabulous job.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (14:55.834)

questions is really, Malati, how are you kind of like courageous enough to say like, this is something most units do kind of haphazardly, and I'm just going to go for it. I think this is something that needs to be an area of focus. And I'm going to really start building a whole new career on this because I think, I hope it will encourage other people to say, there are things we do in the NICU, but it's not optimized. And maybe I can be this kind of champion.

for change.

Malathi (15:27.738)

I don't know how it started. Honestly, it's just one after other. I think the passion driven, like, okay, so I passion committed to it and I found this in the local center. Then I can take this to the next level, then form this task force. I don't know, one after other, just happened. But I completely agree. It's just, I haven't thought of this.

It's going to be this expanded international reach. And I was hoping it's going to be like, if I help the 10 other centers to form their family centered care committees and then improving the family centered care, that's the winner. That's a success for me. So that's how everything started. Then it's expanded now. Now we are applying for a grant and we are working on this red cap survey to optimize and standardizing the family centered care work. So it's the

the force of people surrounding me like you and Morgan and Kiera and Colby. So I think everyone together working for this cause is the one that really helping and keep this task force successful.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (16:42.102)

I love that. And I want to get to some more of the details of the things that the task force is kind of propagating. So you mentioned you optimally think every unit should have a family centered care committee in your own NICU that understands the local needs and can make changes for families. Maybe Morgan, you can speak to what's the difference between a family centered care committee and a family advisory committee.

at local institutions because the task force is hoping that every NICU has both, actually.

Morgan Kowalski (17:16.77)

Yeah, and I think that, you when you think about the word advisor, it's typically something that comes in after a decision has been made or after a policy has been created or after guidelines have been written. And so I think it's important to have a family advisory committee to kind of oversee some of those things. I think a family centered care task force is more about integrating families in all levels of care, not only.

while they're inpatient, but into the care of inpatient families. So a former NICU parent contributing to the care of inpatient NICU families by reviewing parent presence policies, excuse me, peer mentorship, maybe even having like hosting a peer support group or their...

going to like staff trainings alongside neonatologists to present to staff about their perspective and why family -centered care is important. Malathi, do you want to add anything to that?

Malathi (18:26.224)

Yeah, so I can add a couple of things that are going so far when we did the phase three quality improvement work last year as a part of the task force. So we created a definition of what is the family centered care committee? What is a family partnership council? So family centered care committee is like a group of multidisciplinary group of clinicians. So it could be occupational therapist or physical therapist or nursing, nursing leaders and medical director.

So they are part of the family -centered care committee. And you could have one or two family partners to be a part of that family -centered care committee. Or you don't have any family partner, that's completely okay. And family partnership council, and we are calling this as a partnership because we wanted them to be an active role, not a passive advisory role. So we wanted to call them like a family partnership council. That's the group of former NICU parents.

So it could be like a 20 of them or five or two, whoever is that. are going to be overseeing FCC committee activities or whatever we take them to for that advice or their feedback. So that's how we defined a family partnership council and family centered care committee. But if you go and ask others, they may have a different name. So in Canadian, they actually have a family committee or they have a PFAC.

patient and family advisory council. So there could be a different name, but it should be a group or structure overseeing these activities. That's all.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (20:01.062)

Well, I thank you actually for highlighting my terminology because I think our words matter and I think that's something that the FCC task force is really being sensitive to the way we talk about families, for example, families not as visitors in the NICU, right? We shouldn't use the term visitors because that's their baby. This is their baby's home. So thank you. think logistics matter. And I think you've highlighted an important part about the Family Centered Care Task Force.

in that it's an overarching theme that no decision should be made without the family members and family partners. So on the website, we've got listed at least 18 family partners and talk a little bit more about the structure of the task force, which is unique to other collaboratives where there is a family, former NICU family member part of every kind of area of the hierarchy.

Malathi (21:01.286)

Yeah. So we do have a core team. So core team is like supervising and then they are managing and organizing everything in the task force. We have two neonatologists and myself and Colby Day and two family partners and Kira Soros and Morgan Kowalski. So we have an equal partnership in a leadership level. So that's the core team. Then we have an executive council family partners. So when I started this task force, we can call this a family centered care task force without family partners involved.

So that's why I reached out to them individually and then I asked them, hey, this is my vision. This is what we are trying to improve. And they are like one email they got include me, count me in. I'm in. So that's the passion they wanted to give back to this community. So I recruited family partners.

And we have a diverse family partner. Still there is some area we can improve on and we are only one non -birthing partners as a family partner. So our next stage is just improving and recruiting more diverse family partners and executive council. Then we have an executive council for healthcare partners and healthcare partners with the diverse, with the nursing leaders and occupational therapist. And we have a neonatologist and nurses.

So we have a different level, multidisciplinary healthcare partners and executive council. Then we have a committees. so we have three committees and a newsletter committee. So it's run by Morgan and Wargabi is a unitologist and we have a marketing and communication and you lead that DAFNA and Alex is a family partners leading the committee.

And we have advocacy committees led by Nicole, who is a family partner, as well as the nurse practitioner, and Kerry is a unitologist. So we wanted to have an equal partnership in every level between clinicians and family partners. That's our goal, whatever we do.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (23:03.022)

I love that. Thank you for setting that standard. I hope other collaboratives, even if their focus is not on family -centered care, that they will start to take up the call to include families. I'm really hoping you can give an overview of some of the resources that the Family -Centered Care Task Force provides to the community.

Morgan Kowalski (23:28.418)

Would you like me to take that one off? So we do our bi monthly webinars, which are free to anyone in our membership. It's free to join free to attend. We do a quarterly newsletter publication for which I am a co chair of that committee. And we really tried to include actionable takeaways for family centered care.

Malathi (23:28.742)

You want to take it on, Morgan?

Thank you.

Morgan Kowalski (23:51.862)

We have a ton of NICUs reporting success on gaining buy -in around family -centered care practices by sharing our newsletter with their colleagues. We provide a monthly FCC column in neonatology today. We also have a section on our website where we provide articles and abstracts relevant to family -centered care websites that are helpful for implementing family -centered care.

We have all of our webinar recordings live on our website along with slides and any relevant resources. We've got monthly office hours, which are also free for our members. It's a not recorded casual conversation over Zoom where folks can bring kind of their more specific nitty gritty barriers to implementing or strengthening FCC and then kind of gather input from other folks who

maybe have overcome that barrier or who are overcoming that barrier at that time. And we also do a monthly poll. So we get questions from our membership all the time. I think our monthly poll for August is about doula support in the NICU. So we're asking folks what that looks like if they have a doula in the NICU. And then

We go ahead and post those results on our website so they live there forever. They can be accessed by everybody at any time. And what am I missing Malathi, anything?

Malathi (25:26.406)

I think you've covered everything, Morgan. One thing I really enjoy is people actually reach out and we got several email from the NICU. So actually last month webinar page church, she gave a talk about families as a neuro protectors and she referred to this policy that the parents can take the babies out the park or outside the hospital in the open.

environment so before discharge so she they have a policy in place and so some other Nikki reached out to us can we have that policy or is there a way that we can so she was she shared that policy and then Morgan shared with the team and they are actually going to use those and then modify of course modify and based on their need so it's just the way you don't have to reinvent the wheel so the resources out there we are just making it easy for you just to implement the family center.

Ben Courchia MD (26:21.409)

And so we're getting near the end of our episode, so I want to make sure I squeeze that question in because I feel like there's a bit of a dichotomous perception of the FCC Task Force and family -centered care practices in the NICU where I feel like family members are going to be very interested in bringing this into the care of their babies. But for the physician team, sometimes it could be like, my God, do we have to reinvent the wheel? How do we round?

Morgan Kowalski (26:22.04)

So.

Ben Courchia MD (26:48.589)

and there might be some reluctance in saying, we want to change everything because we have a way of doing it? What is your advice for teams that would like to shift things a little bit, but who are concerned about making dramatic changes to the way care is delivered in their unit?

Malathi (27:04.156)

Yeah, so that's a great question, Ben. So that's the reason we put together this survey. So it's a clinician. So you can actually, as clinical leaders or medical directors, you can go through the survey and then see where you are in family practice delivery. So we have a comprehensive, it's a comprehensive survey. I'm not saying it's a two minute survey or two question survey. It's a comprehensive survey.

and formed by our family partners and the executive council and then reviewed by the healthcare partners. So we actually put together in different categories. So those questions will provide a baseline information for the clinician where they are with the family centered care activities. If you look at this AAP recommendation, the levels of care, it includes family centered care as a component of the family standard of care for the FCC inclusion.

And if you see WHO, it's including the family component. So every organization is supporting this. And if you look at the US News and Ranking, that's part of FCC is part of that. So if you are just checking off and just saying you are delivering the FCC, maybe this comprehensive survey will help us see, are we truly delivering the family -centered care? Is there any way we can improve? So that's the next step.

Ben Courchia MD (28:27.627)

And yeah, and it seems like there might be some some equipoise from the institution themselves really to try to implement this because again, this is a metric that is being looked at on a more on a broader scale.

Malathi (28:41.168)

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly true. So we actually going to see them, you can get your unit result with the scores. We built scores with every questions, important questions, of course. And so then you can get your individual unit scores, and then you can get comparison with the other centers who participated in the survey in early next year. So you can benchmark yourself where you are.

you are extremely well performing or you are way behind. And so that's so you can get better. So that will help us to put our unit too. So you can just brag yourself, my unit is in this 33 out of 36 score. So that will help us to improve in some way. Yeah.

Ben Courchia MD (29:21.047)

Or it might be the kick in the butt that you need.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (29:23.354)

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Well, you guys talked about, I mean, really the amazing success that has been able to happen in the last year to 18 months. Lots more engagement with the webinars, people subscribing to the website, getting on the listserv, engaging with one another in the office hours. Can you talk a little bit about…

Malathi (29:23.903)

Exactly.

Daphna Yasova Barbeau, MD (29:47.726)

the future, the goals of the Family -Centered Care Task Force, which I think will get to some of the points you guys are talking about. How do we implore to the C -suite and to ensure that this is a standard of care?

Malathi (30:01.66)

Yeah, so buy -in from the insurers and buy -in from the leadership is a challenging thing to get the buy -in from the FFCC. So once we get the survey, and our hope is just to get that measured. And if, let's say, in my unit, we are really performing well in a discharge area, so maybe having a form a small group, quality improvement, and we recruit the centers.

topic -specific quality improvement. So if you are behind on discharge education, join this small group collaborative so you can work on improving the discharge. Or if you behind on family integrated into care, so you can work on that group. So I think we have to have a topic -specific quality improvement goals for this task force, next step. then once we benchmark,

The next step is to take this to the insurer or higher level. I'm not really expert in that area, honestly. So I have to reach out to the people where we can go on then maybe legislation or somewhere as we have to put.

Ben Courchia MD (31:18.421)

Morgan Mallety, thank you so much for being on the show with us today. And thank you for all the work you're doing at the Family Centered Care Task Force. I usually have to ask beforehand, can we put the contact information so that people can reach out? But if you go on the FCC Task Force website, is FCCtaskforce .org, you can reach out to whoever and anyone on the Task Force.

I think definitely you are as well on there and all the email addresses are there so you can reach out to the task force and its members to learn more, to find out about the resources that are available and maybe to join the efforts to make the care of NICU babies more inclusive. So Malati, Morgan, thank you so much again for taking the time to be on with us and congratulations on this amazing work.

Morgan Kowalski (32:03.672)

Thank you, Ben and Daphna.

Ben Courchia MD (32:07.715)

Have a good day,