2 minute read
Support and Scale Innovative Practices / July 2024
Scaling Promising Practices
Early Childhood Action Strategy (ECAS) teams serve as a laboratory to develop, incubate and assess innovative practices and, where promising, help to transition them to more permanent organizational homes. Here are updates on several efforts that had their genesis within ECAS teams and have since transitioned to other organizations, where they may become part of ongoing intervention practices.
Peer Support for Perinatal Substance Use Disorder (PSUD)
The Makua Allies peer support program focuses on keeping new mothers who are healing from substance use together with their infants. With leadership from EPIC ‘Ohana, and support from the Department of Health, the program is helping new mothers on O‘ahu and Hawai‘i Islands.
The Makua Allies team is hard at work designing a monitoring and evaluation system to monitor and improve the program.
LATCH Lactation Consultation
The LATCH (Lactation Access Transforming Communities in Hawai‘i) team has partnered with MedQuest, HMSA and with lactation consultants (IBCLCs) to bring lactation consultation to underserved families in Hawai‘i. Working with the Smallify design thinking team, LATCH has developed a FastPass to rapidly connect new parents to lactation support.
First prototyped with 15 families, the Lactation Consultation FastPass pilot will expand to reach 50 families insured by Medicaid who would otherwise face multiple barriers to lactation care.
Health insurers are eager to support more rapid and widespread access to lactation consultation, which supports better physical, social, and emotional outcomes for newborns, infants, and young keiki.
