Engaging Families in Policy Change
Families’ lived experience gives them critical expertise in the services and support they need for their children to thrive.
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Early Childhood Developmental Health Systems (ECDHS): Evidence to Impact Center
Building equitable and family-centered early childhood systems that work to secure the health and well-being of young children and their families.
Babies and toddlers need a variety of supports to thrive, yet families experiencing poverty and inequities often have limited access to the services they need, when they need them.
The Early Childhood Developmental Health Systems (ECDHS): Evidence to Impact Center is a program focused on building early childhood systems to improve and strengthen the health and well-being of babies and toddlers in states and communities experiencing high poverty levels.
Early childhood developmental health systems play a critical role in ensuring that families receive seamless access to care by bringing together maternal and child health, early care and education, child welfare, and other human services and family support programs.
To ensure early developmental health and family well-being services are comprehensive, systems must be evidence-informed, equity-driven, and reflective of the experiences and perspectives of families that have historically faced structural barriers. The ECDHS: Evidence to Impact Center envisions a future in which states and communities have a comprehensive early childhood developmental health system that effectively supports all families with young children to receive the services they need to thrive.
The Center aims to:
- Strengthen the evidence base of state ECD systems.
- Accelerate ECD systems development.
- Increase systems-building skills and the number of early childhood and health system leaders.
- Advance the delivery of high-quality ECD promotion and support services in pediatric settings in support of the Transforming Pediatrics for Early Childhood (TPEC) program.
The ECDHS: Evidence to Impact Center is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and is a partnership of ZERO TO THREE, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Help Me Grow National Center, with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, Family Voices, Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, and the Institute for Child Success.
The continuum of care our babies and toddlers need to thrive is only as strong as the systems and programs that support them.
Dr. Debbie Cheatham, Director, ECDHS: Evidence to Impact Center
Advancing Systems Change
An early childhood developmental health system is an organized group of partners and organizations within a state or community working to bring together critical early childhood and family support services.
Early childhood systems are complex, and the implementation of new changes or investments in a state’s early childhood system’s operations and infrastructure takes time and commitment. The ECDHS: Evidence to Impact Center helps states and communities improve the six enabling, foundational system conditions that produce measurable impact and can be sustained over time: policies, practices, resource flows, relationships and connections, power dynamics, and mental models.
Six Conditions of Systems Change:
Policies
Government, institutional and organizational rules, regulations, and priorities that guide the entity’s own and others’ actions.
Practices
Espoused activities of institutions, coalitions, networks, and other entities targeted to improving social and environmental progress. Also, within the entity, the procedures, guidelines, or informal shared habits that comprise their work.
Resource Flows
How money, people, knowledge, information, and other assets such as infrastructure are allocated and distributed.
Relationships & Connections
Quality of connections and communication occurring among actors in the system, especially among those with differing histories and viewpoints.
Power Dynamics
The distribution of decision-making power, authority, and both formal and informal influence among individuals and organizations.
Mental Models
Habits of thought—deeply held beliefs and assumptions and taken-for-granted ways of operating that influence how we think, what we do, and how we talk.
Strengthening Connections: State Approaches to Connecting Families to Services
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Better Outcomes for Babies: Key Practices of Cross-System Collaboration
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