ABCD Recognized Nationally for Advancing Family-Centered Care in Early Childhood Systems

Assuring Better Child Health & Development (ABCD) has been nationally recognized for its innovative work advancing family-centered care and family voice in early childhood systems.

ABCD’s practice, “Authentic Family Experience: Using a Co-Design Framework,” has been accepted into the MCH Innovations Database, a national resource maintained by the Association of Maternal & Child Health Programs (AMCHP). The database highlights effective, innovative, evidence-informed practices that improve maternal and child health outcomes and strengthen systems that support young children and families.

This recognition celebrates ABCD’s commitment to ensuring that families are not just recipients of services, but partners in designing them.

Why Family Voice Matters

Across the country, families raising young children often face complex systems when seeking developmental services, pediatric care, and community supports. For families navigating developmental concerns or disabilities, these systems can feel overwhelming and difficult to access.

Yet historically, families, especially those from rural communities, culturally diverse backgrounds, and underserved populations, have often been left out of conversations about how these systems should work.

ABCD’s work begins with a simple but powerful question: What if families helped design the services meant for them?

Using Co-Design to Improve Services

ABCD’s Authentic Family Experience model uses a co-design approach, bringing families, healthcare providers, and community partners together as equal collaborators. Through structured conversations, storytelling, and collaborative design sessions, families share their lived experiences navigating early childhood systems. These insights help providers and organizations understand the real barriers families face and identify practical solutions that improve how services are delivered.

In this model:

• Families are leaders and decision-makers, not just participants.

• Providers gain a deeper understanding of family needs and experiences.

• Systems become more accessible, responsive, and equitable.

  
  

By centering lived experience, co-design helps ensure that early childhood programs and developmental services better reflect the realities of the families they serve.

Elevating Diverse Family Voices Across Colorado

ABCD has partnered with hundreds of families across Colorado through initiatives such as the Family Experience Network, creating opportunities for families to share their perspectives and help shape improvements in early childhood systems. These partnerships ensure that family voices across cultures, languages, and communities are included in shaping policies and practices that affect young children’s development.

Families’ insights have helped inform improvements in:

• Developmental screening conversations

• Family-provider communication

• Access to early childhood services

• Coordination between healthcare and community programs

By listening to families and working alongside them, ABCD helps build stronger relationships between families, providers, and early childhood systems.

National Recognition for Family-Centered Innovation

Being recognized as a Cutting-Edge Practice in the MCH Innovations Database affirms the impact of ABCD’s work to strengthen early childhood systems through family leadership.

This recognition highlights how co-design and authentic family engagement can improve maternal and child health programs, create more effective services, and build systems that better support children’s healthy development.

When Families Lead, Systems Get Better

At ABCD, we believe that families are experts in their own experiences. When systems listen to families and work alongside them, solutions become more meaningful, sustainable, and effective.

We are deeply grateful to the families who have shared their stories, insights, and leadership, and to the ABCD team, Family Leaders, and community partners who continue advancing family-centered care in early childhood systems.

Because when families lead, systems get better.

Our work is supported in part by the Special Olympics Systems Change for Inclusive Health Subgrant, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The contents of this project are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Department of Health and Human Services.