Emerging Innovations

Moving our innovations to sustainability through further enhancement and scaling. This includes translational advocacy where a clear policy agenda has emerged and development of a policy platform through research and partnerships in areas where specific goals are not yet clear.

Mobilizing parent leadership, elevating them to their highest potential to lead healing processes as family leaders, researchers, community mental health workers and policy advocates. We will establish a community of practice with researchers, clinicians, advocates and parents. We plan to review research on effective parent leadership and identify actionable next steps to incorporate into our interventions.

Integrating fathers into mental health supports, tapping into the immense potential they have to positively shape their children’s lives and protect families. Fathers play a crucial role in early childhood development, yet too often, economic, cultural and systemic barriers prohibit them from fully engaging in their children’s lives. ECIN will partner with Black fatherhood organizations in D.C. to strengthen fathers’ well-being and relationships with their children.

Transforming community mental health workforce training and development, helping to address the shortage of mental health clinicians and leveraging the essential lived experience and wisdom that community members can offer to peers. Developing our mental health workforce will create enhanced pathways to economic stability, which is a critical contributor to the well-being of children, families and communities.

Exploring connections between family economics and mental wellness, both of which impact child and family well-being. Our Parent Cafe team and Be Strong Families partnered with parent leaders to co-create a conversation card deck that is being used to facilitate dialog about protective factors that support economic resilience and upward mobility. We are also collaborating with two local organizations to launch an innovative two-generation cash transfer demonstration project designed to disrupt intergenerational poverty and advance family economic stability, health and well-being.

Ensuring effective cultural grounding of our existing interventions to ensure greater impact. ECIN’s focus on serving communities in Washington, D.C., has grounded our interventions in the area’s culture. We will expand our work geographically and demographically to engage new cultures and communities, such as Spanish-speaking populations in our area.

Expanding our impact into Maryland by enhancing the invaluable services Children’s National and MedStar Health provide. We are also building important relationships with policy advocates and systems leaders to expand clinical care and leverage lessons learned in D.C. to improve systems in Maryland — and vice versa.

Promoting collaborations between early learning and primary pediatric care settings to ensure access to multi-generational supports that help kids and their parents/caregivers, together. Our HealthySteps program has taught us that early childhood development and mental health assessments are key to a child’s well-being. By promoting these cross-sector collaborations focused on screening, family support and early relational health, we hope to increase access to services and amplify the impact of individual programs and interventions. Our policy advocacy efforts will help advance systemic solutions to promote this integration.