Each year, the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) awards four organizations to replicate a practice from the MCH Innovations Database (formerly known as Innovation Station). If selected, applicants receive tailored technical assistance (TA) and individualized guidance from AMCHP and representatives (coaches) from the practice they wish to replicate. AMCHP provides two separate tracks of technical assistance─ the Capacity Building Track and Implementation Track. The track used depends on an organization’s level of readiness to replicate an Innovation Hub practice. To learn more about the process, visit our website and check out the current 2021 through 2022 Replication Projects below!
Capacity Building Track Projects
This track is designed for organizations who have selected a practice from the MCH Innovations Database to implement but need additional support and TA to get the practice up and running.
1. Pennsylvania Department of Health, Bureau of Family Health
The Bureau of Family Health under the Pennsylvania Department of Health is preparing to replicate Innovative Approaches: Community Systems Building Grants for Children and Youth With Special Health Care Needs (CYSHCN). The objective is to create initiatives and practices that specifically target and eliminate systemic barriers and improve systems of care for CYSHCN. Innovative Approaches is a threefold initiative that uses a family-driven systems change approach rather than a program-based approach to address community improvements for families of CYSHCN. The Pennsylvania Department of Health will be collaborating with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, Division of Maternal, Child and Family Health to pilot this initiative in Philadelphia County. This replication project is led by Danielle Rhodes of PA DOH and representatives of Innovative Approaches serve as coaches: Debbie Biggerstaff (Cabarrus Health Alliance) and Kristin Dodge (North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services).
(L to R) Kristen Zuk (Co-Founder), Victoria Edelman (Co-Founder), and Ashley Lugo (Founder)
2. Choosing Kind
Choosing Kind’s mission is to provide mothers with the resources and encouragement they need in order to thrive as individuals and within a family unit in the Philadelphia suburbs. Choosing Kind strives to address postpartum depression through many activities (peer-led support groups, educational outreach, and community engagement) and partnerships with the Women of Color Health Equity Collective (WOCHEC) and the Maternal Wellness Center. Founder Ashley Lugo and Co-Founder Victoria Edelman of Choosing Kind are preparing to replicate the WOCHEC’s Community-Based Perinatal Support Model with coaching from WOCHEC’s Board President, Dayna Campbell. This practice aims to address barriers to care to achieve optimal mental health outcomes for mothers and families, through multisector collaboration in the areas of education, training, resource development, triage/referral protocols, and screening.
Implementation Track Projects
This track is designed for organizations who have selected a practice from the MCH Innovations Database and have proven they have the organizational supports and partnerships necessary to begin implementing it.
1. Partnership for Children’s Oral Health (PCOH)
PCOH is a network of organizations and individuals in Maine united by a common vision: “ensuring that all Maine children can grow up free from preventable dental disease.” PCOH focuses on systems changes to meet the oral health needs for all children and families, prioritize prevention, and address oral health as an essential element of overall health and well-being. PCOH partners will be collaborating to replicate the Virtual Dental Home model alongside their coach, Paul Glassman (Pacific Center for Special Care). The Virtual Dental Home model is a community-based oral health delivery system that provides people with dental diagnostic, preventive, early intervention services in nonclinical community settings such as schools; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); Head Start sites; low-income community centers; and nursing homes. PCOH hopes to lay a strong foundation with this replication project involving dental providers and local Head Start agencies in order to support future expansion of the VDH model in other settings as well.
2. Small World Yoga
In 2014, Executive Director Liz Veyhl founded Small World Yoga to connect people and create community by increasing access to yoga and its healing and transformative benefits. Small World Yoga provides free or deeply discounted trauma-informed yoga and meditation to individuals living in Middle Tennessee, with recent community partner locations added in Oxford, Mississippi. Keenan Hartman and Leah Friend of Small World Yoga will be replicating Urban Lotus Project: Trauma-Informed Yoga for Youth with coaching support from Nick Stanton (Urban Lotus Project) and Eileen Hough (Nevada Department of Health and Human Services). The Urban Lotus Project promotes physical activity and provides stress reduction tools for youth who are disproportionately affected and those with special health care needs who are often exposed to adverse childhood experiences. Through this replication, Small World Yoga plans to expand its trauma-informed yoga for youth programming to continue to improve health outcomes and lifestyle factors for adolescents.
