The 2015 Institute of Medicine report Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation provided a blueprint for action to advance the early care and education workforce with a set of recommendations directed to stakeholders at local, state, and national levels. To facilitate the implementation of the recommendations at the state level, the National Academy of Medicine’s (NAM’s) Innovation to Incubation program launched the B8 State Pathways to Implementation Project.
In 2016, the Director of the Innovation to Incubation Program at the National Academy of Medicine, who had worked on the national report, reached out to the McKnight Foundation and asked if they would financially support a Minnesota team. The McKnight Foundation agreed to support Minnesota’s participation in the second co-hort of states working with the Innovation to Incubation Program. The goal of this program is to develop state-specific plans to implement some of the recommendations from the national report. The National Academy of Medicine required that each state select a team of 8 to 10 people to participate. That team, initially known as the B8 Workforce Core Team, began meeting in September 2016.
The National Academy of Medicine also required that each state convene a larger advisory committee. Minnesota chose to use the existing P3 Design Team as the advisory committee. The McKnight Foundation, together with the West Central Initiative, continued to support this work to transform Minnesota’s early childhood workgroup.
As participants in the B8 State Pathways to Implementation Project, self-assembled state “teams” met regularly to discuss challenges and opportunities for implementing the report’s recommendations in their specific state contexts. Participants learn from each other and from experts in the field to inform the development of tailored state action plans and generate strategies for stakeholder engagement. Minnesota worked with teams from Colorado and Nebraska.
So far, eight state and regional teams have participated in the B8 State Pathways to Implementation Project: California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Virginia, Washington State, and a regional team representing Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington, DC.
The work of Transforming Minnesota’s Early Childhood Workforce (TMECW) project is currently led by a Leadership Team. The team continues to meet regularly and has adapted and evolved over the years.
TMECW Leadership Team Members:
(Update coming soon)
Former Technical Assistance Support:
Kimber Bogard, PhD., is the Former Director of Innovation to Incubation at the National Academy of Medicine. She provided technical assistance to the B8 Workforce Core Team through September of 2017.
The P3 Design Team served as the Advisory Council for the work of the B8 Workforce Core Team within the year of the NGA.