Our Approach: Build Capacity and Transform Culture
Ideas and promising innovative strategies are only as strong as the people guiding their development. Here at the Lab, we give as much attention to changemakers as we do to their innovative strategies, and engage changemakers in a range of activities focused on building capacity and transforming culture.
- Mastermind Sessions are an opportunity for changemakers to engage advisors from across Connecticut Children’s and receive unbiased, insightful feedback to advance the evolution of their innovation. Advisors have expertise in different facets of children’s healthy development and experience designing, testing, implementing, and scaling promising and efficacious strategies.
- Changemakers also have the opportunity to engage in technical assistance. Together, Childhood Prosperity Lab and changemakers will develop a technical assistance package, including a scope of work, mutually agreed upon deliverables, and work plan, to strengthen the design, implementation, evaluation, and/or growth of the innovation. Technical assistance can range from defining the core components of the innovation model to developing a logic model to leveraging human-centered design to elevate the voice of families and communities.
- Childhood Prosperity Lab also offers a range of training to elevate existing and emerging best practices in child health, development, and well-being. We are currently focused on elevating strength-based approaches to supporting children and families, and offering training on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework.
- We make these opportunities available to key stakeholders supporting the optimal healthy development of children and families by advancing an ongoing and iterative outreach and engagement strategy. Through these efforts, the Lab seeks to cultivate a network of diverse stakeholders and align community, programmatic, and system efforts supporting children, families, and communities.
- Lastly, we elevate awareness and understanding of promising and efficacious innovations in an effort to support their reach, sustainability, and impact.
Our Values: Key Pillars to Support Childhood Prosperity
These efforts are built upon three core values that uniquely position Childhood Prosperity Lab to lead this work:
- Strength-based: advance social innovations that leverage and build upon the unique strengths and attributes of children, families, and communities.
- Community- and family-driven: engage children, families, and communities as partners in the design of innovations that support their health, development, and well-being.
- Systems-oriented: prioritize cross-sector, multi-disciplinary thinking and partnerships to understand and shift the conditions negatively influencing children, families, and communities.
These values take into account that there is no one driving factor influencing childhood prosperity, but rather that it is the combination of and connection between social, behavioral, environmental, and genetic influences that truly makes a difference. To successfully support childhood prosperity, we cannot support children in isolation from their surroundings. Rather, we must support children in the context of their surroundings by strengthening families and supporting communities.
Calling all changemakers: We want to hear from you!
Are you developing, testing, or scaling strategies that benefit children, strengthen families, or support communities? We want to connect with you!
Send us an email at ChildhoodProsperityLab [at] ConnecticutChildrens.org. Tell us how you are promoting childhood prosperity and let us know how we can best support your efforts.
Jacquelyn M. Rose, MPH, is the program manager of the Childhood Prosperity Lab, which is a program of Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health.
Paul H. Dworkin, MD is executive vice president for community child health at Connecticut Children’s, director of Connecticut Children’s Office for Community Child Health and founding director of Help Me Grow National Center. Dr. Dworkin is also a professor of pediatrics at UConn School of Medicine.
