What It Really Means to Join a Step Up Together Action Collaborative

If you’re considering joining a Step Up Together Action Collaborative—or encouraging your hospital or community partner to do so—you might be wondering: what does participation actually look like?

The short answer: it’s a structured, time-limited commitment with real benefits for your team and your patients. The longer answer is that there’s a rhythm to the experience, and understanding that rhythm helps teams prepare and right-size their participation.

The Structure: 7 Virtual Sessions Over 5 Months

Each Action Collaborative unfolds across seven virtual sessions, spaced over several months. These aren’t passive webinars. They’re interactive learning and coaching spaces where teams check in, share progress, and build confidence to test their transfer processes.

Session topics include:

Getting ready for effective emergency drills
Reviewing tools and preparing your environment
Understanding roles, collaboration, and transfer best practices
Debriefing drill experiences to maximize learning and team-building
Sustaining changes through quality improvement

Faculty are there to coach, troubleshoot, and keep momentum going. All sessions are recorded, and CME/CNE credit is available, so multiple team members can benefit.

The Core Work: Running Your Own Drills

The heart of the Collaborative is not the Zoom calls, it’s the drills you run at home, with your own team. Each team receives a Step Up Together Drill Kit with:

A realistic clinical case that unfolds over time
Instructions for running either a Partial Transfer Drill (within one setting) or a Full Transfer Drill (from community to hospital with EMS)
Observation worksheets
A structured debriefing and action-planning guide
CNE/CME forms to provide credit to drill participants

Your team chooses which scenario to focus on—whether intrapartum, postpartum, or neonatal—and then conducts drills at your own facility.

Step Up Together Faculty will coach you on how to plan and facilitate, but your team runs the drill. This matters: drills only “stick” when they’re embedded in your local processes, with your real people, in your real environment.

The Commitment: Real Time, Real Payoff

Participating does require some staff time. Teams are asked to:

Attend the 7 virtual sessions (1–1.5 hours each)
Conduct at least one Partial Transfer Drill and one Full Transfer Drill during the program (Learn the difference.)
Complete a short Drill Report Form after each exercise

For some teams, this feels like a stretch, but those who’ve gone through it consistently say it was worth the time. In fact, most teams report that once they ran one drill, they wanted to keep going. Some teams have kept up regular interdisciplinary drills long after participation in an Action Collaborative, like Burr Ridge Birth Center in Illinois, a participant in our very first pilot when they were getting ready to open. Read their experience.

The Flexibility: Right-Sizing the Experience

Not every team is ready to jump straight into a Full Transfer Drill. That’s okay. The program is designed to meet teams where they are. Some start with table-top “walk throughs” or partial drills before moving to the more complex full drill. Faculty can help you right-size your plan and set realistic goals.

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s progress. Even a partial drill can spark improvements—like clarifying EMS contact procedures or streamlining how records are handed off.

The Support: Tools, Coaching, and Community

You won’t be doing this alone. Participation gives you access to:

Tools: standardized drill kits, planning templates, and checklists
Coaching: expert faculty who have helped dozens of teams navigate these same challenges
Community: peers from across the country working on the same issues, sharing what’s worked for them

Together, these elements create a structure that builds confidence, supports accountability, and helps teams move from talking about integration to actually testing and improving it.

The Bottom Line

Joining an Action Collaborative means committing to show up for seven virtual sessions, to run at least two drills locally, and to share back what you learn. It’s a real commitment, but one that’s doable, flexible, and deeply rewarding.

Hospitals, EMS teams, and community midwives who’ve participated describe the experience as transformative. Teams report not just better preparedness for emergencies, but stronger relationships, clearer communication, and a renewed sense of shared purpose.

If you’re weighing whether to participate—or convincing your partner hospital to join you—this is what you can expect: a structured but adaptable, evidence-based program that gives you the tools, coaching, and confidence to strengthen safety and teamwork across levels and locations of care.