Maternal and Child Health Bureau Bright Futures Pediatric Implementation Cooperative Agreement

Applicants must demonstrate significant experience with health promotion and preventive health services for infants, children and adolescents, particularly with the development and implementation of clinical guidelines for delivering such services, as well as the ability to access and engage significant numbers of pediatric health care providers at the national, state and local levels.

The primary focus of this cooperative agreement is on the implementation of Bright Futures-identifying opportunities and engaging key partners to leverage improvements in health promotion and prevention, developing and implementing strategies and tools and assessing their effectiveness, and taking effective strategies to scale. The tasks set forth in this cooperative agreement funding opportunity announcement include maintaining and updating Bright Futures Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents. These activities will be undertaken only through close consultation with MCHB.

The goals of Bright Futures are to: 1) promote desired social, developmental, and health outcomes of infants, children, and adolescents; 2) enhance health care professionals’ knowledge, skills, and practice of developmentally appropriate health care, emphasizing health promotion and prevention, in the context of family and community; 3) increase family knowledge, skills, and participation in health-promoting and prevention activities; and 4) foster partnerships between families, health professionals, public health and the broader community to promote children’s health.

The awardee, working closely with MCHB and other partners, will provide national leadership to address all four of the above goals. This will require, but not be limited to:

1) maintaining and updating the Bright Futures Guidelines for Health Supervision of Infants, Children and Adolescents, and related materials and tools, in response to changing standards and new scientific knowledge and ensuring wide dissemination and ready access to those guidelines and materials by health care and public health professionals, families, health professions educators, policymakers, payers and others.

2) developing, implementing, evaluating, and taking to scale innovative strategies and tools to foster the use of Bright Futures by multidisciplinary providers of pediatric clinical care, including oral health care, in a variety of settings; by public health professionals; and by families and communities;

3) fostering the integration of Bright Futures into the education and training of health care providers in multiple disciplines, including oral health and public health, at the pre-service and continuing education levels; and

4) improving the evidence base for health promotion and preventive services for infants, children and adolescents by supporting early career pediatric clinical investigators.