As we settle into the new year, it's the perfect moment to look back on the milestones we reached last year and shift our focus to the exciting plans we’re putting in motion for the months ahead. As I reflect on 2024, it's clear Connecticut Children’s Childhood Prosperity Lab (the Lab) made significant strides in advancing social innovations that support the health, development, and well-being of children and families where they live, learn, work, play, and pray.
Recognizing that 90% of children’s health is influenced by the complex interplay between social, behavioral, environmental, and genetic/epigenetic factors, the Lab is committed to advancing social innovations that have the potential to substantially impact the social determinants of health. Unique in its focus compared to other innovation initiatives embedded within healthcare systems, Childhood Prosperity Lab:
- Co-designs with families and communities: The Lab engages children, families, and communities in the design, implementation, evaluation, and scale/spread of the social innovations they are intended to access, utilize, and benefit from.
- Advances systems thinking and systems change: The Lab supports changemakers as they integrate and leverage systems thinking and systems change to understand how their innovation fits within the network of supports and services available to children and families; understand how the innovation might generate change; and then work across organizational and sectoral boundaries to lead change.
- Strengthens protective factors: The Lab supports changemakers as they design, implement, and evaluate social innovations that strengthen family- and community-level protective factors, including parental resilience, social connections, knowledge of parenting and child development, concrete support in times of need, and social-emotional competence of children.
In 2024, this is exactly what we led! Over the course of the year, Childhood Prosperity Lab:
- Facilitated seven Mastermind Sessions with changemakers advancing social innovations that focus on critical, contemporary child health, development, and well-being priorities - ranging from early childhood developmental promotion and tracking to newborn screening to suicide screening and more.
- Facilitated five introductory training modules on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework.
- Facilitated a Social Innovation Workshop with a changemaker seeking to increase awareness of and accessibility to outdoor spaces as a strategy to reduce anxiety and increase well-being and happiness.
- Facilitated seven presentations (oral and poster) on a range of topics, including but not limited to co-designing a geospatial information system; using human-centered design to innovate healthy spaces for families in Hartford; and integrating strengths-based approaches into early childhood systems
In collaboration with North Hartford Ascend, the Lab:
- Designed and launched the inaugural North Hartford Ascend Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework with 15 professionals representing 12 organizations affiliated with Ascend and six petals on the Office for Community Child Health Flower Diagram: Child Health Services, Injury Prevention, Environmental Health, Family Support, Early Care and Education, and Arts and Culture.
- Leveraged human-centered design to engage the North Hartford Promise Zone Community and Affiliated Organizations in the development and design of the initiative’s website; Community Resource Map; and data walk facilitated at the November 2024 Community Conversation.
In collaboration with the Help Me Grow National Center, the Lab:
- Co-authored a report and hosted a national webinar documenting the implementation and impact of integrating goal concordant approaches and leveraging parent/caregiver priorities as the driver of services plans in the context of comprehensive early childhood system building.
- Designed and launched a systems leadership learning community with thirteen Help Me Grow communities across the nation in collaboration with Collective Impact Forum.
We are very proud of the work that the Lab has accomplished in 2024 in collaboration with such prestigious local and national partners. Our approach and commitment to advancing social innovations (co-designing with families and communities, advancing systems thinking and systems leadership, and strengthening protective factors) is affirmed in the feedback received from others. When reflecting on a Collaboration Session facilitated as part of the Ascend Strengthening Families Community of Practice, a participant remarked that it was “a great session” with “challenging, thought-provoking questions and conversations.”
Yet, as we look ahead to 2025, our work is far from finished. The opportunities for strengthening and addressing the social determinants of health impacting children and families demand bold action, a deep commitment to community leadership and engagement, and an unwavering focus on sustainable impact.