Engaging Families to Support Early Childhood Development in the Health Center Exam Room and Beyond: CDC’s FREE “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” Resources Can Help
On August 8, 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Early Childhood Developmental Health Systems (ECDHS): Evidence to Impact Center hosted the webinar, Engaging Families to Support Early Childhood Development in the Health Center Exam Room and Beyond: CDC’s FREE “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” Resources Can Help.
Families play an essential role in their children’s development. When health centers share information with families through engaged developmental monitoring, it can enhance their efforts to improve screenings, identify delays and disabilities, and encourage families to follow up when referred to services. To support these efforts, this webinar spotlighted CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program and its free resources to help providers and staff engage and empower families as critical partners in developmental monitoring.
This event was tailored for federally qualified health centers, but also beneficial for a broad array of professionals, including clinicians, support staff, administrators, leadership, and anyone who interacts with, or supports programs for, young children and their families. The webinar learning objectives were to:
- Recognize the critical role that families play in monitoring and supporting their child’s development.
- Understand how engaging families in monitoring as part of ongoing developmental surveillance complements developmental screening.
- Describe how CDC’s free “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” resources can help engage families in developmental monitoring in a simple and effective way.
- Identify strategies health centers can implement to engage families and build early childhood development expertise into care teams.
To learn more, download the presentation slides and scroll down to watch the recording and read key webinar highlights and takeaways.
Key Takeaways
- CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program helps improve the early identification of developmental delays and disabilities by promoting family-engaged developmental monitoring and screening from ages 2-months through 5-years.
- Developmental disabilities are common, affecting 1 in 6 children.
- Developmental monitoring combined with screening identifies more children with possible delays than either strategy on its own.
- Early identification can lead to early intervention, and when children and families get the support they need, outcomes improve.
- Community health centers can effectively implement family-engaged developmental monitoring and screening in numerous ways:
- Build trust with families by regularly talking about child development, asking and answering questions, and providing anticipatory guidance.
- Listen carefully, as developmental delays and disabilities can be hard to identify, and parents’ and early childhood professionals’ concerns are usually substantiated.
- Follow recommendations for developmental surveillance and screening and take action if a milestone is missed.
- Refer families early for further evaluation and early intervention services, and follow-up to provide ongoing support.
- Consider how various staff can share resources and reinforce messaging with families, including physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, medical assistants, WIC staff, community health workers, family support workers, health educators, and home visitors.
- “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” resources can help engage families in developmental monitoring through multiple strategies:
- Promote and share developmental monitoring resources, such as by posting flyers and adding a link or QR code to websites and portals.
- Directly encourage families to monitor development using milestone checklists, such as by sharing printed checklists as anticipatory guidance during well visits, asking about milestones and concerns at following visits, including a Milestones Moments booklet into new patient packets, and/or demonstrating the Milestone Tracker app.
- Actively use the milestone checklists with families, such as by having staff direct families to download the Milestones Tracker app and complete a checklist in the waiting room, then making time to discuss progress, missed milestones, or concerns.
Free “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” Resources to Support Developmental Monitoring and Screening
CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” provides free, high-quality, research-based tools to help families learn the signs of child development and encourage them to act early to access screening and additional services when they have questions or concerns. Materials are written with family-friendly language, include milestones that are easy to observe at home, and are available in various formats. Resources include:
- Milestone checklists with guidance for every recommended well-child visit from 2-months to 5-years of age. Printable checklists are available in multiple languages, including Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, English, Farsi, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
- Digital online checklists in English and Spanish that enable families to see videos and complete and share the checklists online.
- Milestone Tracker app, available in English and Spanish, to help parents spot everyday milestones with photos and videos, find tips and activities to support development, and easily share progress with their doctor and providers.
- Additional materials, such as the comprehensive Milestone Moments booklet, children’s books, posters, and tip sheets, available in English and Spanish.
- Act Early Ambassadors who serve as champions across numerous states, territories, and communities. They are a knowledgeable resource to help integrate “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” strategies and identify what resources are available to support referrals and follow-up.
Speakers
Jill M. Sells, MD
Jill M. Sells, MD, is the Physician and Partnerships Lead for the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She previously served as the Medical Advisor for the National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety, part of the National Head Start program’s Training and Technical Assistance system. A pediatrician with over 20 years of focused work in early childhood development, she has supported multiple national, state, and local early childhood initiatives, with an emphasis on family engagement and health care connections. She was the founding Executive Director of Reach Out and Read in Washington state, a family-centered early childhood literacy program based in the medical home. As an executive leader and consultant, she gained extensive experience supporting policy and programs related to early childhood and health care, encouraging an integrated early childhood systems approach that meets families’ needs within communities. She is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and past chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Council on Early Childhood.
Toni M. Whitaker, MD
Toni M. Whitaker, MD, is a Professor and Division Chief in Developmental Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) and Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis. She currently serves as a Consultant to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program and has been the Ambassador to Tennessee for the program for more than a decade. In these roles and as Medical Director of a statewide training program of the TN Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, she has been active in promoting family-engaged developmental monitoring and developmental screening to a wide variety of audiences.
She is the Director of the UTHSC Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental and Related Disabilities (LEND) program funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau to improve the health of individuals who have, or are at a higher likelihood for developing, autism or related developmental disabilities by providing interdisciplinary graduate and professional training in neurodevelopmental disabilities.
Katie Green, MPH, CHES
Katie Green, MPH, CHES, is a Senior Health Communication Specialist and the Team Lead for the “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She has served as a public health educator and communication specialist within CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities since 2002. She has expertise in developing messaging, tools, resources, and programs to empower individuals and families to take action to prevent birth defects (2002-2007) and to educate and empower families to monitor and promote children’s early development (2007-present).
She leads a small but award-winning team of communicators, evaluators, physicians, and partner strategists in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of CDC’s “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program, overseeing all of its efforts to support families and other caregivers of young children and improve the systems and programs that serve them.
Dina Lieser, MD, FAAP
Dina is Senior Advisor for Early Childhood Systems and Strategy at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) in the Division of Home Visiting and Early Childhood Systems. In that role she informs program development and policy around early childhood systems. She participates actively in federal partnership development aimed at improving the coordination and collective impact of programs at the federal level to catalyze state systems development and improve early developmental health and family well-being. She contributes to building strategic partnerships in the field and providing subject matter expertise in support of MCHB’s vision of an America where all mothers, children, and families are thriving and reach their full potential.
Prior to joining HRSA, Dr. Lieser served as Chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ National Council on Early Childhood. Dr. Lieser held clinical and pediatric academic leadership positions as well as nonprofit state systems leadership positions focused on practice and policy change to build bridges between the health and broader early childhood system to achieve population impact in health, well-being, and education outcomes.
Jaewon Hong, PharmD, MPS, RAC
Jaewon Hong is the Team Lead for the Early Childhood Development (ECD) award program at the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Bureau of Primary Health Care. This program addresses developmental and behavioral disabilities and delays, learning disorders, and language impairments. His background includes senior roles at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he contributed to regulatory and enforcement activities, managed significant public health programs, and led initiatives to enhance innovation and compliance.He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from Shenandoah University and a Masters in Professional Studies in Health Information Technology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is a licensed pharmacist in New Jersey and holds a Regulatory Affairs Certification.
