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The National Home Visiting Summit, hosted by The Ounce took place January 28th-30th in Washington, DC. This annual summit gives those in the home visiting field “The ability to connect with systems leaders, practitioners, advocates and decision makers in a collaborative pursuit to advance the home visiting field and systems of care to increase service quality and improve outcomes.” -The Ounce
Steve Herr, President and CEO; Kate Gallagher, COO; Nate Lubold, Director of Solution Implementation and Training; and Anna Erb, Director of Content Development represented Advanced Metrics at the Summit. This gave us the opportunity to attend many of the excellent workshops and lectures and delve deeply into the presented content. We all agreed that the conference left us feeling inspired by the good work being completed in the field of home visiting. After returning home from the conference, we each wrote down our own conference highlight.
I found the conference to be a wonderful mixture of policy, advocacy and practice-based sessions. The work that is being accomplished nationally, by home visitors, is impressive on many so many levels. When you are surrounded by all these amazing people committed to improving the short and longer-term outcomes of children and families, it creates a sense of inspiration. -Steve Herr, CEO
Dr. Joia Crear-Perry’s opening remarks on how home visiting can promote health equity really spoke to me. She spoke to how groups of women have historically been denied the possibility of being healthy and that home visiting can play an instrumental role in addressing these health inequities. Through this lens we begin to understand how home visiting can be a vehicle for social justice, through increasing multi-generational access to health care, supporting families to reach their own goals and addressing social determinants of health. In Dr. Crear-Perry’s words “home visiting is social justice”. -Kate Gallagher, COO
For me, the highlight of the conference was the poster session that opened the conference. This session kicked off a dynamic and eclectic theme for the week, demonstrating home visitor’s enthusiasm and excitement for emergent and new research. -Nate Lubold, Director of Training and Implementation
I would say that Dr. Alicia Leiberman’s, closing remarks encapsulated the entire feel of the conference-the enthusiasm, focus on social justice and advocacy. Dr. Leiberman said ‘give families what they need’ while so simple this statement has so much power. What do families identify as needing? Home visiting will play a crucial part in uncovering that answer for each family. -Anna Erb, Director of Content Development
While we each walked away with our own unique impressions from the Summit, we agree that it met its mission to connect those in the home visiting field and increase service quality through education and training. It was a great conference and we look forward to continuing to make more connections with home visitors and supporting home visitors complete the good work they do every day.