First 1,000 Days Partnership Project Will Support and Study the Implementation of New York State Department of Health’s First 1,000 Days on Medicaid Initiative

Albany, NY — The Rockefeller Institute of Government announces the launch of its First 1,000 Days Partnership Project to support the successful implementation of the New York State Department of Health’s innovative First 1,000 Days on Medicaid Initiative, which aims to improve lifelong educational and health outcomes by focusing on early childhood development.

The Rockefeller Institute’s research team will work on the ground at the program’s pilot sites to help community organizations and local stakeholders focus on achieving the goals of each pilot program.

“The First 1,000 Days initiative recognizes that a child’s brain goes through a critical period of development from birth to age 3, and that we must better coordinate and enhance programs and policies to ensure we have healthy infants and toddlers,” said Jim Malatras, president of the Rockefeller Institute. “Success of these Medicaid pilot programs will improve the trajectory of thousands of children’s lives. The Rockefeller Institute is proud to provide the analytical foundation for this bold and farseeing project.”

The Institute will contract with Melodie Baker to lead its new project. Ms. Baker currently serves as the director of education at United Way of Buffalo & Erie County and chair of the Erie/Niagara Birth to 8 Coalition. She brings with her more than nine years of experience in early childhood policy and coalition building. She has conducted workshops and delivered keynote speeches at the U.S. Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods national conferences, assisted in the development of community school models, and cofounded a new inquiry-based public charter school in Buffalo. Ms. Baker is also the founder and president of an independent research-based evaluation and consulting firm.

“Effectively delivering programs that positively impact children and families is incredibly important work,” Ms. Baker said. “There is a climate of urgency for people to work collectively to produce better outcomes for children, and New York has positioned itself as a bold leader in that regard with its First 1,000 Days initiative. I know this is just the beginning of this effort, but I am confident that the work we do will foster local collaboration, transform communities, and create better services and delivery systems for New York’s infants and toddlers, parents, and families.”

“We brought together more than 200 state and local early childhood development stakeholders from a variety of fields to design and select the programs that make up the First 1,000 Days on Medicaid Initiative,” said Nancy Zimpher, senior fellow at the Rockefeller Institute and co-chair of the First 1,000 Days on Medicaid Initiative. “It is exciting — and important — that this same cross-sector, collective-impact approach now is being used for the critical implementation phase of the initiative’s pilot programs.”

The five Medicaid reform initiatives being piloted by the Department of Health under its First 1,000 Days initiative are:

1. Expand successful home-visiting services in three high-risk perinatal communities.
2. Support a pregnancy group-based model of prenatal care in communities of poor birth outcomes.
3. Help increase early literacy by expanding the Reach Out and Read program and supplying books to families of young children at primary-care doctor visits.
4. Launch peer family navigator services at five sites across the state that help hard-to-reach families connect to early childhood health resources.
5. Develop a “hub-and-spoke” data system for cross-sector health care referrals in three communities.

This research and analysis project is funded by a grant from the Pritzker Children’s Initiative, which supports numerous efforts across the country to improve early childhood development