Personal note from Dr. Matthew Biel, Director, Thrive Center | | |
I've always believed the expression "extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures" is correct but incomplete. Whatever measures are called for are always undertaken by people who, whether they see themselves as ordinary or extraordinary, become the latter through their actions.
In these extraordinary times, our upcoming season of Thrive Dispatches, both the podcast and newsletter, will focus on the extraordinary.
We'll discuss extraordinary models of care, explore extraordinary ways of thinking about supporting children and families, and highlight the extraordinary lengths people go to pursue their purpose and do the work they believe in.
Our first newsletter of this new season highlights six extraordinary organizations participating in our fall cohort of the Innovation Hub @Thrive and showcases a new paper discussing the impact of integrating Community Health Workers into a Collaborative Care model in pediatric primary care, featuring Pediatrics Northwest from our first Innovation Hub cohort.
However you categorize the times in which we are living, I hope that you will agree that we need extraordinary people to pursue extraordinary thinking and perform extraordinary feats to help children and families thrive. Normal is not an option.
Onwards,
Matt Biel
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Introducing The Innovation Hub @Thrive Fall Cohort
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We're honored to spotlight six fellows joining our Fall 2025 Innovation Hub @Thrive. This cohort has a special focus on early childhood, recognizing those years where intervention creates ripples across lifespans. These leaders bring wisdom to understand that reimagining mental health, disability care, and early development requires partnership with communities, not prescriptions from afar.
What distinguishes these innovators is their commitment to knowledge creation through listening. They amplify community voices and build on strengths rather than imposing solutions. Each fellow weaves together lived experience and expertise, approaching our field's challenges with cultural humility and urgency. Their innovations span digital health platforms ensuring equitable access to community-led programs nurturing family resilience, all grounded in the understanding that transformation happens through collaboration.
Over three months, they'll work alongside our Thrive Center network to scale these community-backed approaches. Their work illuminates a truth: systems change emerges when we center those we serve, honor diverse ways of knowing, and move with rigor and heart toward supporting families' capacity to thrive.
The Innovation Hub @Thrive accelerates community-backed approaches through three-month fellowships. Applications for our next cohort open soon.
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When our educators are well, our students thrive!
Bounceback aims to address one of education's most pressing challenges: educator burnout and retention.
“Bounceback is a digital health platform that delivers on-demand wellness-focused professional development for K-12 educators. Educators are able to earn up to 10 hours of professional development credit and print certificates straight from the platform. Bounceback is evidence-based and is focused on adult social-emotional learning (SEL) and stress management—when our educators are well, our students thrive!
Bounceback currently serves Headstart, Pre-K, K-12, and universities. But our team knows that early childhood is the foundation of all learning, so it’s imperative that our educators are the very best.”
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Raising kids with ADHD, together.
“Flock is a virtual community, starting in New York City, for families raising young children with ADHD. We're making it easier to understand and find evidence-based support to reduce family stress, both at home and in school.
We know raising a child with ADHD is a unique, sometimes wild, and often joyful adventure. We also know that supporting our kids and getting them what they need at school and beyond, even just knowing how to begin or what to even ask for, can be emotionally and sometimes financially draining, especially when it feels like you're on your own. Here at Flock, we're a team of advocates, builders, and most importantly, parents, united by the belief that all parents deserve support and access to evidence-based information.”
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Easy Bites App
Natalia Stasenko, Founder and Pediatric Dietitian; Kevyn Eva Norton, Product Lead
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Because supporting parents at the table means shaping healthy futures for the next generation.
“Easy Bites is an AI-powered family nutrition platform designed to make mealtimes less stressful for parents & healthier for children. Using pediatric nutrition, behavioral science, and technology, our team supports families during the trickiest feeding years, like starting solids, navigating picky eating, and building lifelong healthy habits.
We built Easy Bites around a unique feeding screener that helps parents and health professionals understand children's unique needs, like nutrition development or mealtime dynamics, and then matches them with smart meal plans, responsive feeding strategies, and coaching. We are currently supporting families as a direct-to-consumer app and also partnering with pediatric specialists and health systems to explore how Easy Bites can be integrated into clinical care. By combining this accessible technology with clinical insights, we hope to reduce the mealtime stress at home while also addressing broader public health challenges around childhood nutrition.”
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Extra Support for Vulnerable Babies and Their Families, Caregivers, and Clinicians
Sarah Cercelli, Systems Change Manager & Tiffany Elliott, Systems Change Specialist
“Northwest Center in Seattle, Washington, focuses on supporting infants and their caregivers transitioning from the NICU to home. These families are navigating confusing systems and medically complex care while also dealing with the emotional well-being challenges that arise from the trauma of a NICU stay. Our early intervention team created the hospital-to-home care model to address the service cliff that families experience. This model integrates support for the mental health of caregivers with clinical support for an infant's feeding, growth, and development.
The systems change team formed in 2022 and shares this care model to address the barriers, gaps in care, and inequities that exist for infants and caregivers transitioning from the hospital into home and community services. We are on a mission to refine the systems of care, build workforce capacity, and advocate for systemwide changes that center the parent-child relationship for NICU families.”
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Every child deserves the chance to thrive, and every family deserves tools that honor their journey.
“The Special Olympics Young Athletes App was developed to help address the challenges that families of children with ID face. Our free mobile app provides families with personalized play-based activities, research-backed guidance, and peer support.
The Special Olympics Young Athletes App is grounded in over 15 years of evidence-based in-person programming. Now, through the app, we're bringing that impact directly into homes around the world. We built this app with families, not just for them. Their voices shaped every feature, and it's designed to be inclusive and encouraging. The app focuses on what their child can do and aims to empower families to navigate their child's health journey with confidence. Our goal is to bring this app to even more families around the world. The Young Athletes app is more than just a resource. It's a companion in the early childhood journey and a warm welcome into Special Olympics.”
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When a child sees themselves succeed, they believe they can.
“Wide Therapy is a digital intervention where neurodiverse children across all learning abilities can see themselves succeed in whatever is challenging for them in real life. By seeing themselves succeed in an understandable way, they're able to apply what they've learned digitally into their real environment.
Wide is the first online platform where you can easily and quickly create personalized simulations, helping children with diverse abilities to overcome challenges and develop essential life skills for personal growth and independence. Wide’s patented digital method was developed by specialists in neurodiverse learning and is based both on research and practical experience. Wide can be used on any device, at any time, with minimal need for adult supervision or guidance.”
| | Extraordinary Thinking: Integrating Community Health Workers In Collaborative Care | | |
Pediatrics Northwest, a participant in Innovation Hub @Thrive's first cohort, exemplifies healthcare transformation through their Community Health Worker integration. As documented in this issue brief, they served 2,800 families in 2024, achieving a 93% behavioral health connection rate and an 8% increase in well-child visits.
Their model demonstrates how embedding CHWs as integral care team members, rather than ancillary support, fundamentally reimagines pediatric primary care by addressing families' interconnected social, emotional, and health needs despite complex billing and sustainability challenges.
Read the paper
| | Interested in connecting with the Innovation Hub fellows as a potential mentor or supporter? Please email us at innovationhub@georgetown.edu | | | Georgetown University Thrive Center for Children, Families, and Communities | 2115 Wisconsin Avenue Suite 601 | Washington, DC 20007 US | | | | |
