As BTC builds on this work to include other community-rooted and led organizations (CRLOs), the project aims to provide public and private funders with expanded evidentiary standards that they can use to re-formulate their grant-making framework and criteria.

The goal is to transform funding practices to support CRLOs that are succeeding in eradicating systemic and institutional racism-induced inequities in maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, filling a critical gap that large healthcare institutions have failed to address.

This partnership builds upon CHAP's previous support of Brazelton Touchpoint Center’s work to explore what Maternal and Child Health-funding agencies could do differently to improve outcomes from conception through the first 12 post-natal months. A summary for this 2022 initiative is below.

Many policy and grant makers now recognize the essential role that community designed and driven programs play in advancing racial and economic equity. Many funders also now realize that current practices often exclude frequently under-resourced, over-burdened programs and that new approaches to vet, support, and evaluate their impact are needed.

In partnership with national experts and institutions, Brazelton Touchpoints Center led a process to co-create guidance on a broader range of means and measures for fostering and evaluating the efficacy of community-driven programs.

CHAP’s planning grant allowed Brazelton to convene and work with partners to design a process that will eventually lead to a compendium of community-driven programs that offer their own approaches to iterative improvement and efficacy assessment. This new compendium will help guide investments in programs created and implemented by and for communities in which maternal morbidity and mortality are largely driven by racial and economic inequity.

About the Brazelton Touchpoints Center

The Brazelton Touchpoints Center (BTC) provides professional and leadership development, organizational learning and change, and research and evaluation services for family-facing professionals in pediatrics, early childhood, infant mental health, children’s libraries and museums, home visiting, child welfare, and other fields. BTC is home to the Touchpoints Approach, the Brazelton Institute (Newborn Behavioral Observations system and Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale), the Indigenous Early Learning Collaborative, Family Connections, the Family-to-Family Real Talk Series, and the BTC Research and Evaluation team. At BTC, we are dedicated to creating a lasting community in which equity, diversity, inclusion, belonging, and access thrive.

BTC is based in the Division of Developmental Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, the nation’s leading children’s hospital (US News and World Report) and a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School .