CSSP and HealthConnect One Partner to Develop ERH Doula Training Curriculum |
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The CSSP ERH Hub, in collaboration with HealthConnect One, are jointly developing a new training curriculum for doulas focused on their role in supporting early relational health between birthing people and babies and advancing equity that will be tested in nine selected communities over the next two years. Investments from the Pritzker Children's Initiative, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and Burke Foundation will enable CSSP to develop a curriculum that helps doulas gain the skills and knowledge to advance early relational health, in order to augment the relationship building they are already doing with birthing people.
Our partner in this work, HealthConnect One (HC One), is a nationally recognized non-profit training and technical assistance agency that collaborates with communities to support under-resourced Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities and families through program development and consultation. They work with communities to develop customized programs and training and provide ongoing technical assistance to community-based doulas, breastfeeding peer counselors, and community health workers to improve birth equity.
Zainab Sulaiman, Vice President of Impact and Advocacy at HC One, shared that, “HC One’s partnership with CSSP is an excellent opportunity to highlight racial, restorative, and reproductive justice within community-centered approaches, and to invest in strengthening familial bonds through peer-to-peer support that centers on communities most impacted by years of historical disinvestment and structural inequities.”
In the first year of this two-year initiative, CSSP and HC One will collaborate with doula and perinatal service providers and families to co-design the ERH training curriculum. In year two, we will test the curriculum with three pilot communities. After a six-month testing period, the pilot community stakeholder group will further refine the curriculum, and it will be implemented in an additional six communities. Collaboration with HC One’s evaluation partner, The Center for Maternal Health Equity at Morehouse School of Medicine, will support data collection and ensure respectful and robust evaluation of the program’s impact for families and communities. Following all of this, we will complete a final revision of the curriculum with recommendations for dissemination of an equity-based, ERH-focused doula training curriculum.
As this work is progressing, CSSP will also partner with local, state, and national policy leaders maximize investments designed to strengthen families and communities, including federal training dollars and state Medicaid financing for doulas and community health workers. One major focus of ERH policy development will be to support policies and programs that can help build an ERH-trained workforce across the country.
CSSP ERH Hub lead, Dr. David Willis said, “This partnership is a keystone of our work. Ultimately, the doula training will help to grow a new generation of community-based, perinatal workforce to carry forward the message about the foundational importance of early relationships.”
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Updates from the Early Relational Hub at CSSP |
Pediatricians, home visitors, child development experts, and parents have all expressed concern that mask wearing during the height of the COVID epidemic might disrupt mother-infant relationships and infant development.
The opinions on this topic range from worrying to reassuring. Some of our nation's most experienced researchers of mother-infant relationships have carefully studied this question and will bring forward some of their findings and reflections to this live session.
This session of Willis and Friends will bring together Drs. Ed Tronick, PhD, Dani Dumitriu, PhD, and Eliza Congdon, PhD.
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The final video in our Perspectives on ERH series is now available. In the fourth session, Dayna Long, MD, Pediatrician and Co-Director, Center for Child and Community Health, UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, is in conversation with Nai Pharn (Ajero), Health Education Coordinator at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, and Jerome Traylor, a parent whose children receive care at the hospital. They discuss why relationships matter in the healthcare system and how to bring Early Relational Health to the work that they do everyday. Ms. Pharn describes her work as a Health Education Coordinator and provides an overview of the Resiliency Clinic program she facilitates. Mr. Traylor shares his experience with the Resiliency Clinic and the hospital and how these programs and relationships have impacted him and his family.
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What is Early
Relational Health?
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ERH is a key building block for learning, development, and mental health. The foundational relationships that babies experience with their caregivers shape the health, development, and well-being of two generations—now and into the future. |
Perspectives on ERH Video Series
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David W. Willis & J. Mark Eddy, Early Relational Health: Innovations in Child Health for Promotion, Screening, and Research. Infant Mental Health Journal. May 2022. Read Here.
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Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. RiverHead Books, NY. 2018.
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Early Relational Health Initiative Vision:
Harness the power of early relationships
for the flourishing of all.
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The mission of the National Early Relational Health Initiative 3.0 is to ensure that all infants, young children, and their families benefit from supports and social connections that advance early relational health and its contribution to lifelong well-being and thriving.
Structural racism, poverty, and other societal barriers can impede the formation of strong early relationships when they result in family stress, community disinvestment, and limited opportunity. When we focus on this foundation and support these relationships, children and their caregivers thrive—now and into the future.
The ERH Initiative is one piece of the many activities at CSSP related to young children and their families, from DULCE, to Strengthening Families, to the Early Learning Nation work, to the EC-LINC work, to the development and promotions of anti-racist, family-driven, and effective early childhood policies, programs, and systems.
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Center for the Study of Social Policy
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