Start How You Want to Finish: System-Stretching Strategies for Advancing Birth Equity
This session was presented during the BUILD 2022 National Conference.
Systems are a complex web of people, policies, practices and priorities. Achieving scalable transformation across this web in a way that has the greatest opportunity to finally impact long-standing disparities requires innovation, AND centering those with lived experience as leaders and authors of transformation. Learn how the LA County African American Infant and Maternal Mortality (AAIMM) Prevention Initiative applied these principals to create authentic collaboration guided by shared values to activate a village of support for Black women, birthing people and families.
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Leading an Early Childhood Team Through the Quality Improvement Process
Article October 7, 2026
Published in Young Children, this 2024 article provides an operational guide for aligning state QIS requirements with broader national standards, quality grants, and staff incentives.
Much-Needed Changes in Child Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems Should Promote Equity
Blog October 7, 2026
Blog authors Gina Adams and Danielle Ewen outline systemic flaws in traditional models. This 2024 blog details how traditional QRIS frameworks often inadequately support parents, underinvest in actual center improvement, and inadvertently exacerbate funding inequalities among diverse childcare providers.
Four Trends in Early Care and Education Quality Rating and Improvement Systems
Fact Sheet October 7, 2026
This 2024 brief evaluates Parent Aware (Minnesota's system) and synthesizes interviews across six states (Delaware, Louisiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington). It identifies critical, modern pathways for administrators looking to overhaul and redesign state frameworks.