Early childhood developmental health systems play a critical role in ensuring that families receive care by bringing together maternal and child health, early care and education, child welfare, and other human services and family support programs.
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 state ECD systems data.
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, James Bell Associates, and Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities at Georgetown University.
Together, we are creating a future where all families with young children flourish.
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.
Source: Kania, J., Kramer, M., Senge, P. (2018). The Waters of Systems Change.