Minnesota Integrated Care for Early Childhood Initiative

The Minnesota Integrated Care for Early Childhood Initiative (MN-ICECI) is aimed at building the infrastructure for an equitable, family-centered, integrated model for conducting early childhood screening, referral, and follow-up within health settings for African American families who are pregnant or parenting young children (ages 0 – 3 years old).

Background

Every family should have an equal opportunity to interact with a high-quality early childhood system that promotes the development and well-being of their children. While Minnesota has prioritized young children and families in systems work, troubling disparities still exist based on the race/ethnicity of the family. Furthermore, Minnesota faces significant challenges in implementing a coordinated early childhood system -- the array of programs is complex and fragmented because of variations in eligibility and funding. The combined impact of these challenges points toward a great need for coordinated efforts around screening, referral, and follow-up within populations who have experienced the greatest barriers to accessing the state's early childhood system -- namely the African American community. It is important to determine how to best promote awareness and access to screening services that are targeted to the African American community's culture and values.

Project Goals

Building off other early childhood initiatives in the state, such as the Preschool Development Grant, the MN-ICECI is a community-led, collective effort to improve identification of developmental concerns or needs in young African American children (ages 0 – 3 years old) so that they can be linked with needed supports and resources to ensure better childhood and lifelong outcomes. The project's goals include:

1. Community-Driven Leadership: Cultivate and support a community-driven leadership structure where problems and solutions are defined by, and decision-making power is shared with the community.
2. Shared Understanding and Vision: Build a shared understanding and vision of gaps, assets, and opportunities in achieving an equitable early childhood system that is inclusive of the health system.
3. Health System Capacity: Increase health system capacity to serve young African American children and their families.
4. Financial and Policy Strategies: Identify and carry out innovative financial and policy strategies to support implementation and sustainability of efforts.
5. Advance Equity: Increase Minnesota's capacity to advance equitable access to services and supports for young African American children and their families.

Community Advisory Council

The MN-ICECI is centered around a Community Advisory Council, which is responsible for driving the work of the initiative by advising on the implementation of the project's goals via a strategic plan. The Community Advisory Council is also crucial in the development of our integrated model of care.

The Council will meet on a quarterly basis, with additional subgroup meetings occurring between these quarterly meetups.

Our Community Advisory Council is being facilitated by Karen Gray and Nora Hall of GrayHall LLP. For more information on the Council or to express interest in joining, please reach out to kgray@grayhall.com.

Project Phases

The work of the MN-ICECI is divided into five phases that build upon one another: set up, assessment, strategic planning, systems change effort implementation, and wrap-up/celebration.

Systems Assessment

We are now in the second phase of the project, which focuses on completing a comprehensive systems assessment. We are working with Rainbow Research to facilitate our assessment framework and process. Rainbow Research was founded in 1974 as a social justice focused research and evaluation firm. Their staff and board are almost entirely comprised of Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC).

More information on the systems assessment process and findings will be posted on this page as they are available.