Lessons Learned from the ECCS CoIIN Coordinating Center’s Evaluative Efforts

The Early Childhood Comprehensive Systems Collaborative Improvement and Innovation Network (ECCS CoIIN) was a five-year nationwide initiative to improve outcomes in population-based children’s developmental health and family well-being, funded by the Health Resources & Services Administration’s (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB).

In our final report, we provide key takeaways and recommendations from the multiyear initiative to improve early childhood service systems in 12 states to increase age-appropriate developmental skills among 3-year-old children and reduce developmental disparities.

The learnings in this report stem from a set of priority questions that the ECCS CoIIN coordinating center sought to address. The areas included in this evaluation report are as follows:

Building connections between state and local level Early Childhood Systems
Expand ECS by building capacity through infrastructure, services, and personnel
Policy implementation through programmatic, regulatory, and legislative changes in support of ECS
Developing and strengthening partnerships to support ECS activities

Building an Early Childhood Community Coalition

A coalition of diverse stakeholders has proven to be a catalyst for early childhood improvement in Chelsea, Massachusetts, helping them align messages, raise awareness, and collect more robust and relevant data. Ready to build one in your community? Find out how here.

Did You Know Childhood Trauma Affects Nearly Half of American Children?

In the United States, 34.8 million children—nearly half of American children—are exposed to adverse childhood experiences. These experiences fall under the category of early childhood trauma and can severely harm children's future health and well-being. Click in to find out more about this rampant and often unreported problem.

Cracking the Code on Early Childhood Data

Highlights and lessons-learned from real communities who used real-time data to achieve real results. Their experiences can help demystify the data journey and show how data informs improvements to developmental health and overall well-being

Developing Multi-Sector Partnerships in Early Childhood

Children and families deserve better services and supports. But silos in our systems makes those supports too hard to find. By building cross-sector partnerships, children’s health stakeholders can make it easier for families to find what they need when they need it. Keep reading for five strategies to develop sustainable cross-sector collaboration.

Empowering Parents to Improve Early Childhood Systems

We know first-hand that parent partners can make a big difference in improving children's health outcomes. Here, we’re highlighting one parent partner's story and providing strategies for states interested in putting parent support and parent-partnerships at the forefront of their early childhood improvement efforts.

How States Can Better Support Community Early Childhood Efforts

Providing families with comprehensive services that actually fit their needs starts by elevating the work at the community level to inform policy and program improvements. New York’s approach to synergizing state and community work offers a valuable framework for other states to take up in their own systems-change efforts.

Launch an Early Childhood Parent Academy

Interested in developing free, accessible lessons that empower parents around early childhood development? An early childhood parent academy—a structured set of courses covering key topic areas that parents need to know about early childhood development—does just that. Click in for a curriculum and strategies on how to launch one in your state.

Promoting Fathers’ Mental Health During Children's Early Childhood

Father involvement has significant benefits for everyone involved. But too often, social expectations about masculinity and structural barriers make it difficult for fathers to get involved, especially during the early years of life.

Scan of Early Childhood Developmental Screening Strategies Reveal Varied Approach

A new issue brief from NICHQ and the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP) provides insight into the Title V Maternal and Child Health Block Grant developmental screening activities across the country.

Strengthening Early Childhood Systems: Lessons from the Pandemic and a Call to Action

For years, experts have called for a comprehensive system that links young children and families to needed health and social services at the community, state, and federal level. The coronavirus pandemic has revealed that the need for that system is more urgent than ever.

Taking a Community-Based Approach to Early Childhood Systems-Change

A community-based partnership in Liberty City, FL works directly with the families who are most isolated from support. Discover more about the partnerships they've developed and the young lives they've changed.

Addressing Early Childhood Health Equity in Communities and States

Early Childhood Health Equity (ECHE) work seeks to strengthen early childhood systems to support healthy child development and reduce health inequities and disparities that can have a lifelong impact. These briefs synthesize the recent work of the ECHE Landscape Project and highlight the themes and findings that emerged across the project activities.