Learn how PSP builds on the understanding that early relationships matter by partnering with families to innovate pediatric clinical practice. Its five Proof Point Communities (PPC) leverage the frequency and accessibility of the pediatric well-child visit schedule to support social-emotional development and nurturing relationships early in a child’s life.
Pediatrics Supporting Parents
Transforming pediatric care to better support parents and promote children's social and emotional well-being during critical early years.
About
Pediatrics Supporting Parents (PSP) is a national initiative dedicated to transforming well-child pediatric care so that every family and child receives support for healthy social and emotional development. PSP reimagines pediatric well-child visits, especially during a child’s early years, as a meaningful opportunity for pediatric providers and parents to work together. By expanding the role of these visits beyond traditional physical health, PSP promotes practical tools, guidance, and family-centered supports that help strengthen nurturing parent-child relationships and improve children’s overall well-being. Central to this work is honoring parents as partners and equipping them with confidence, knowledge, and resources to support their children’s development.
PSP advances systemic transformation in pediatric care by collaborating with communities, providers, and families to integrate best practices into routine clinical settings and address structural barriers that limit broader change. Through a shared learning community model, community partnerships, and co-creation with families, the initiative works to embed relational health and emotional development into everyday pediatric practice. PSP’s collaborative approach helps ensure that these enhancements to well-child pediatric care are sustainable, family-driven, and accessible across diverse communities.
View the PSP explainer video to learn more.
Family Partnership
Learn about PSP’s approach to family partnership which supports family leaders as they engage in co-design at both the local and national levels. Power-sharing and leadership development are foundational to this work, along with a strong commitment to compensation for families who contribute their time, lived experience, and expertise.
Governance
Learn about PSP’s distinctive approach to governance, including how and why the funder collaborative chose to share decision-making authority, including budget responsibilities, with the PPCs. Family leaders and practitioners serve as decision-makers and work in partnership to co-design the initiative’s priorities and overall approach, helping to guide investments and shape the direction of the work.
Proof Point Communities
Building on its origins as a funder collaborative, PSP’s Phase 2 Learning Community shifted its focus to direct community investment. Through five competitively selected PPCs, PSP advanced a multi-year, shared-learning model in which parents, pediatricians, community leaders, and funders co-created governance structures, strategic priorities, investment strategies, and innovative approaches.
Rooted in local wisdom, each community engaged in a yearlong planning and co-design process to strengthen family partnership and develop tailored implementation plans for 2023–2025. Together, these communities collaborated to transform pediatric primary care in ways that promoted early relational health and children’s social and emotional development, while sharing innovations and lessons learned to drive sustainable change across the field.
Innovations Library
Working across several topic areas and the 14 common practices, the five PPCs developed and tested innovative approaches for transforming clinical practice, family partnership, and well-child visits. These teams co-created practical solutions to strengthen early relational health and support both the families and practitioners involved in the work. The innovations can be searched by topic area, clinic type, and with the 14 common practices, making them easy to explore.
Backbone Organization and Learning Community Support
ZERO TO THREE has served as the backbone organization for PSP since 2023, providing leadership and establishing the systems, structures, and coordination needed for consistent implementation and dissemination. In this role, it has facilitated planning and supported the PSP Governance Body, while partnering with Alarcon Consulting, Family Voices, and other subject matter experts to deliver tailored technical assistance (TA), strengthen communication, and support the PPCs across the Learning Community.
Through in-person and virtual peer learning, communities of practice, individualized technical assistance, and dissemination support, teams receive practical guidance aligned with their needs. This coordinated, hands-on approach fosters connection, quality, accountability, and sustainability—positioning communities for lasting impact beyond the initiative.
Learning Community Resources
The Family Partnership CoP covered assessing readiness for engaging with families, narrative medicine, and resources from Family Voices with a focus on defining co-creation and crafting key strategies and action items.
Key Strategies, Action Items, Overview & Resources
The Evaluation CoP covered Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR)-informed logic models, use of data summary tables, dissemination planning with a focus on ways to involve family leaders in evaluation activities.
Session Overviews & Resources
The Implementing Early Relational Health (ERH) into Practice Workflow CoP created a space where clinicians could share resources and approaches for embedding ERH in clinic workflows.
Session Overviews & Resources
From June 2024 to December 2025, ZERO TO THREE’s backbone team sent out a comprehensive, bi-monthly newsletter to the Learning Community. Before the first missive, members of the Governance Body came up with the name and shaped the ways in which content would be shared.
Every PPC received support from Promise Venture Studio for developing a pitch video to garner broader support for their work. Teams also received tailored one-to-one coaching and TA from one of these listed organizations to address sustainability challenges specific to their PPC. Click below to learn more.
Sustainability CoP Overviews & Videos
Promise Venture Studio
Health Management Associates
Coleman Collaborative
Meet the Backbone and Technical Assistance Support Team
ZERO TO THREE:
Kimberly Bradley, MPH, MNM
Kim serves as Program Director for ZERO TO THREE’s Pediatrics Supporting Parents team, acting as the primary liaison to the Governance Body and overseeing technical assistance, training, and dissemination efforts. During her tenure, she has led initiatives supporting Tribal Nations’ early childhood systems and home visiting programs and partnered with Healthy Start communities to improve birth outcomes. With 25 years of experience in early childhood systems development, community engagement, and capacity building, Kim is based in Western New York. Go Bills!
Sarah MacLaughlin, LSW
Sarah is the Sr. Training & Technical Assistance Specialist for ZERO TO THREE’s Pediatrics Supporting Parents team. She is also a parent educator and author of two award-winning books for caregivers, What Not to Say and Raising Humans With Heart. She has worked with children and families in a variety of educational, training, and support settings for over 30 years. Sarah lives in Maine with her family, cat, and a small flock of chickens.
Alarcon Consulting:
India Alarcon
India Alarcon is the Principal for Alarcon Consulting, and Project Director of Pediatrics Supporting Parents (PSP). Since the initiative’s inception, she has led strategy development, managed grantmaking, and partnered closely with the funder collaborative, implementation teams, and learning partners to guide PSP’s growth and impact. Outside of her work, India can be found relishing the beauty of the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two young daughters. For more information about Pediatrics Supporting Parents, please contact India at [email protected].
Family Voices:
Allysa Ware, PhD, MSW
Allysa Ware is the Executive Director of Family Voices, the family engagement technical assistance provider for PSP. Allysa has been a member of the PSP team for more than seven years and has worked to recruit and support the engagement of over 30 family leaders in the PSP initiative. When not supporting and mentoring family leaders, Allysa enjoys taking in all forms of art including concerts, museums, theatre productions, etc. For more information about Family Voices, please contact Allysa at [email protected].
Roseani Sanchez
Roseani Sanchez is a Project Director at Family Voices and has spent the past two years supporting the PSP project as a Family Engagement Technical Assistance Provider. She works closely with family leaders and teams to strengthen leadership skills and advance true co-creation as a core principle of meaningful family engagement. She is passionate about building partnerships that center on family voice. Fun fact: she is her children’s loudest cheerleader at every soccer game.
Resources
Pediatrics Supporting Parents launched its first phase in 2017 and created the foundational vision.
Learn More
Drawing on qualitative research from innovative primary care sites, this paper explores how pediatric well-child visits can be transformed into a powerful platform for nurturing children’s social and emotional development, strengthening parent-child relationships, and supporting parents’ mental health.
Graphic recorder Rio Holaday synthesized the common goals of the PPCs and the aspirations and values of the entire PSP Learning Community.
Contact
To connect with the Pediatrics Supporting Parents team, email Kimberly Bradley at [email protected].
