What works in helping communities to learn the signs and act early?

This is a collection of locally inspired models and ideas that have been implemented and evaluated to varying degrees in programs and communities.

A promising practice helps spread the reach of the campaign and has the potential to positively impact families with young children and the organizations, health care professionals, and early care and education providers who serve them.

Many of the activities in this collection represent the work of Act Early Ambassadors and State Systems grantees who found creative solutions for implementing Learn the Signs. Act Early. with greatest potential impact using very modest resources. We hope their work will inspire you to think about how you can adopt and adapt activities in your local programs and communities to promote awareness of the importance of tracking developmental milestones and acting early on concerns.

 

How were Promising Practices identified?

The collection includes activities from the beginning of the campaign (2005) through 2014. We established criteria to assess each activity and determine which to include in the collection. Criteria were informed by program values that broadly define what we consider to be a successful and promising activity. Each year we will review partner activities and apply the criteria to them so we can continue to update and add promising activities to the collection.

 

What about activities not captured here?

Some activities contain more detail than others, and some activities may have been excluded because we did not have sufficient information to score them. In the years to come, we plan to:

• Improve our ability to gather as much information as we can about our partners’ important work to promote and integrate Learn the Signs. Act Early. within programs and communities across the country,
• Expand evaluation studies of promising activities, and
• Use this collection to raise awareness among partners about their role in sharing their important work with us and collecting process and outcome data to demonstrate impact.

 

If you have questions or suggestions about the collection or any of the specific activities, please contact ActEarly@cdc.gov and include “Promising Practices” in the subject line.