Strategic Plan - Family Connects

A
STRONG START
FOR
EVERY FAMILY

Family Connects
2026-2029 Strategic Plan

OUR MISSION

We transform care for all families with newborns by partnering to offer nurse visits so every family has access to healthcare, guidance, and connection.

OUR VISION

Every family is nurtured as they welcome a newborn.

OUR PURPOSE

To ensure every family with a newborn is supported, connected, and confident as they navigate early childhood and grow together.

OUR PILLARS

Committed to
EVERY FAMILY

We work to ensure each and every family receives personalized and trusted care based on their unique needs. We partner with communities to reduce barriers, create access, and strengthen systems to serve all families.

Guided by
SCIENCE

We use research and data to drive decisions, maintain fidelity to what works, and continuously improve. We adapt responsibly as contexts and communities evolve.

Driven by TRANSFORMATION

We believe early connection changes everything. Our collective work strengthens families, shifts systems, and catalyzes lasting change in family support, maternal health, and child outcomes.

Centered in RELATIONSHIPS

We center families, elevate nurses, honor teammates, and partner with communities through listening, respect, and shared learning. We build trust across differences and act with humility.

Grounded in
INTEGRITY

We lead with accountability, trust, and transparency. We honor commitments, steward resources responsibly, and hold ourselves to high standards in service of families, partners, and colleagues.

Strategic Plan: 2026-2029

Over the next three years, Family Connect will accelerate network growth and further our national leadership—supported by a foundational commitment to quality and outcomes —to serve more community partners and nursing teams who care for families with newborns.

Our approach will be anchored in five strategic priorities to drive reach, growth, leadership, and innovation.

BUILD ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY FOR SCALE, QUALITY, AND TRUST

Goal 1: Align staffing, roles, and operating model to support growth needs.
Goal 2: Strengthen internal processes, systems, and cross-functional execution.
Goal 3: Implement a standardized, price/cost-sensitive community partnership pathway that strengthens fidelity and drives quality.
Goal 4: Build communications function to reinforce trust, create awareness, and strengthen reputation.
Goal 5: Invest in staff sustainability, retention, and organizational culture.

DRIVE DIVERSIFIED FUNDING AND CHAMPIONS

Goal 1: Create a diversified organizational funding strategy with clear targets and pathways.
Goal 2: Strengthen advancement infrastructure and launch development and stewardship approach.
Goal 3: Strengthen leadership engagement for resource development.
Goal 4: Build a broad champion network to support national positioning.

ENABLE SCALABLE GROWTH

Goal 1: Define expansion strategy and sequencing.
Goal 2: Build policy/advocacy/lobbying capacity and define activating state/site offerings.
Goal 3: Strengthen technical assistance on financing and insurance to states and sites.
Goal 4: Advance federal policy and funding pathways that accelerate state growth.
Goal 5: Honor founding legacy in Carolinas through partnership stabilization and growth.

ADVANCE RESEARCH, LEARNING, AND INNOVATION

Goal 1: Establish integrated research, learning, and innovation leadership through a dedicated executive leadership role.
Goal 2: Improve data extraction and reporting for internal and external audiences.
Goal 3: Build a learning culture across Family Connects and sites that supports fidelity and improvement.
Goal 4: Build a research and innovation agenda.

PROMOTE A NATIONAL STANDARD

Goal 1: Cultivate expert leadership capacity and define a standard for postpartum nurse visiting.
Goal 2: Identify and pursue national measures and preventive service topic pathways.
Goal 3: Build the coalition and credibility, or join the tables/coalitions, required for standard-setting.
Goal 4: Align measure/standard development with expansion and reimbursement strategy for Family Connect

“Sometimes you don’t know where to get support from, or how to take that first step. Family Connects knew that we were a new family that needed help, and they took the first step to guide us.”

–Esmerelda
Esmerelda R, mother of two

Thank You!

Family Connects would like to express gratitude for the commitment and expertise of our strategic planning committee in guiding the development of this plan, as well as to all board members, staff, and partners who contributed.

Ensuring all families are nurtured as they welcome a newborn takes each and every one of us.

Strategic Plan Overview

Full Strategic Plan

COMMITTEE MEMBER, FOUNDER

Dr. Karen O’Donnell is Associate Professor (retired), Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center and Director of Prevention and Global Initiatives at the Center for Child and Family Health (also retired). She is a Senior Research Fellow at Duke Global Health Initiative. She received her graduate training in special education (M.Ed.) and clinical psychology (Ph.D.) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed post-doctoral study in Early Childhood at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle.

She has been a Licensed Practicing Psychologist in North Carolina since 1988. Her expertise focuses on infant and early childhood and development, traumatic stress, parenting, maternal mental health and treatment, the effects of in utero cocaine and HIV exposure on early development, and child and family assessment. Dr. O’Donnell is the lead author on the PEPFAR funded Child Status Index (CSI), now used to assess orphans and other vulnerable children in over 16 resource poor countries; the CSI provided the model for the Family Support Matrix, used in the Family Connects program. She continues to be an active participant in the implementation of the universal short-term home visiting program for newborns and their families, Family Connects, and its national dissemination.