The Virginia General Assembly enacted the 2021 Appropriation Act, which authorized $124,470 from the general fund and $82,980 from non-general funds the fourth year for the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) to establish an a Memorandum of Understanding with Virginia Commonwealth University, Children’s Hospital to provide the General Assembly funds to  administer a Perinatal Quality Collaborative. In 2019, the Virginia Assembly awarded an additional $315,000 to address health disparities and inequities in maternal health across the Commonwealth.  The Act mandated that the Perinatal Quality Collaborative shall work to improve pregnancy outcomes for women and newborns by advancing evidence-based clinical practices and processes through continuous quality improvement with an initial focus on pregnant women with substance use disorder and infants impacted by neonatal abstinence syndrome.

Since the establishment of the Virginia Neonatal Perinatal Collaborative (VNPC) in 2017, the statewide collaborative has quickly attracted interest from hospital systems, health care professionals, professional organizations, state agencies, and community stakeholders and partners that have a mission to improve outcomes for mothers and babies across the Commonwealth.