Circle of Respect

This brief presents lessons learned from Baltimore’s B’More for Healthy Babies (BHB) Healthy Family America (HFA) home visiting program on how to establish multi-directional communication across funders, city agencies, home visiting programs, and families to create a culture of collaboration that benefits families with young children.

Part of a larger project entitled the Early Childhood Health Equity Landscape Project (ECHE), this case story is one of three that highlights bright spots in multi-sector early childhood health equity initiatives around the country with the common themes of meeting the diverse needs of families and community providers; and committing to lift the voice of and center families and caregivers (individually and collectively). Strategies of family engagement used by BHB’s HFA home visiting programs include:

• Creating a culture of collaboration
• Understanding the stories behind the numbers
• Coordinating services prioritization across the city for families
• Working collaboratively to ensure family and home visitor relationships are strong
• Adopting a strengths-based and holistic approach to supporting families

A related set of issue briefs titled Addressing Early Childhood Health Equity in Communities and States highlight the themes and findings that emerged across the project activities. Key themes gathered through the ECHE Landscape survey included cross-sector relationships, operationalization of health equity, adaptation of initiatives to the COVID-19 pandemic, data and measurement, sustainability, and connections between local and state ECHE initiatives.