Who we are
LA Best Babies Network
LABBN is a community benefit of Dignity Health — California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, but we work with hospitals and community organizations across L.A. County to strengthen and support their home visiting services. We make sure these programs have the tools to provide families with excellent perinatal and early childhood education and social support.
Our mission and vision
We’re Committed to Our Partners’ Success.
Mission
Our mission is to provide the training, database, communications, and advocacy infrastructure necessary to strengthen and increase the capacity of home visiting and other family-support programs and systems, allowing them to empower more families to create healthy, prosperous futures for their newborns and young children.
Vision
We envision an integrated countywide family support system with a well-trained workforce that has the infrastructure and resources necessary to help expecting families and those with young children to thrive.
Our History
Our Story
Since 2001, when LA Best Babies Network (LABBN) was founded, we’ve been strengthening organizations and systems so they can support L.A. County families. With a focus on health equity, we work to ensure that all families have access to perinatal health and early parenthood support resources.
Our history of providing support for various grant-funded perinatal health projects has helped us develop tools, strategies, and best practices that strengthen the work of our partners so they can focus on maximizing their impact and serving the community.
Our Current and Past Work
2001
After the Los Angeles Children and Families Proposition 10 Commission (now First 5 LA) designated $15 million for a Healthy Births Initiative to improve L.A. County birth outcomes, LA Best Babies Network was created to develop the implementation framework for the initiative, and later to oversee it.
The goals of the Healthy Births Initiative were to:
- Reduce the number of low birthweight babies.
- Reduce disease and disability among newborns.
- Develop strategies to improve every child’s chance for lifelong good health, growth, development, and learning.
LABBN oversaw the:
- Best Babies Collaboratives: A partnership of agencies that provided direct services to women in a community with a large concentration of high-risk pregnancies.
Using one-on-one case management, outreach, social support, and health education, these Best Babies Collaboratives worked to improve and expand coordinated prenatal and interconception care in the communities they served.
- Healthy Births Learning Collaboratives: A community-driven forum where perinatal caregivers and advocates exchanged ideas and experiences, kept current on best practices, and coordinated to improve health and well-being in their communities.
- Work of the Healthy Births Advisory Board.
- Care Quality Improvement Initiative.
This work continued until 2013.
2006
Just a few years after the implementation of the Healthy Births Initiative, LABBN – in partnership with the National Initiative for Children’s Health Care Quality – launched the Healthy Births Care Quality Collaborative, which focused on providing pregnant patients with seamless access to support services.
LABBN’s role in this work included:
- Working with 10 sites (7 community clinics, 2 private practices, and one hospital-based practice) on ways to improve health outcomes for pregnant patients (e.g., detecting and treating maternal depression, screening and treating gestational diabetes, and helping patients stop smoking, fight infections, and follow a healthy diet.
- Developing a quality framework for ambulatory perinatal care.
- Establishing a data registry for the 10 practice sites to be able to regularly assess their progress.
2008
LABBN launched its second Healthy Births Care Quality Collaborative after the success of the first one. This time, LABBN’s scope of work included:
- Working with 10 clinical sites – all Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program-approved providers – to improve screening for maternal depression; perinatal infection; gestation diabetes; and tobacco, alcohol, and substance use; and to provide education and support to encourage patients to breastfeed and follow a healthy diet during and after pregnancy.
2008
While LABBN continued its work with the Healthy Births Initiative and Healthy Births Care Quality Collaborative, in 2008, LABBN launched new initiatives to improve family health outcomes. A grant from the UniHealth Foundation allowed LABBN to work on improving the quality of postpartum care in designated L.A. County communities, and a grant from the L.A. Care Health Plan allowed it to focus on addressing perinatal health disparities among African American women in South L.A.
This same year, LABBN partnered with 211 LA County to create a comprehensive database of mental health resources to help those suffering from perinatal depression.
2008
In 2008, LABBN expanded it scope of work to include home visiting, with a two-year contract to coordinate and implement the pilot project for First 5 LA’s universal home visiting program, Welcome Baby. This pilot was based at California Hospital in downtown L.A.
2012
The Los Angeles County Perinatal Health and Early Childhood Home Visitation Consortium was formed to bring together the county’s home visiting programs in an effort to create a more cohesive and coordinated approach to home visiting service delivery in the county.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Maternal, Child and Adolescent Health Programs (MCAH) Community Advisory Committee partnered with LA Best Babies Network to chair the Consortium.
2014
Welcome Baby was expanded to 13 other hospitals throughout the county.
That same year, First 5 LA extended its support beyond Welcome Baby and increased its home visiting investment to include more intensive and longer-term programs: Parents as Teachers and Healthy Families America.
LA Best Babies began to provide the training, database, and communications infrastructure, working with each hospital and organization to ensure fidelity to the home visiting models they were using: Welcome Baby, Healthy Families America, and Parents as Teachers. All these hospital and community organizations formed what is now known as the Family Strengthening Network.
2016
The L.A. County Board of Supervisors instructed the Department of Public Health, in collaboration with the leadership of other County departments, First 5 LA, and LABBN, to develop a plan to coordinate, enhance, and expand home visiting programs to serve more expectant and parenting families.
2018
LABBN began to provide training support for MAMA’s Neighborhood, a home visiting program provided by the L.A. County Department of Health Services.
This same year, the L.A. County Department of Public Health contracted with 17 community-based organizations that had been providing the Healthy Families America and Parents as Teachers programs through funding from First 5 LA to expand these programs to previously ineligible families. LABBN partnered with the Department of Public Health to provide training, data, and technical assistance support to these programs.
2019
The L.A. County Departments of Public Health and Public Social Services received funding for the implementation of the CalWORKs Home Visiting Program, and LABBN partnered with them to provide support to the agencies contracted to provide home visiting services through this funding.
Since 2008, LABBN has continued to work in close partnership with First 5 LA, alongside many other partners, to expand the home visiting landscape in L.A. County and strengthen and support the delivery of high-quality home visiting programs.
LABBN has received grants and support from a variety of public agencies and nonprofits. Based at Dignity Health – California Hospital, LABBN is proud and grateful to be a part of the hospital’s Community Health team. As a leader of the Family Strengthening Network in L.A. County, LABBN is grateful for the generous support of First 5 LA and L.A. County agencies. Other supporters have included the March of Dimes, L.A. Care, UniHealth Foundation, and the California Home Visiting Program.
Our Careers
Work With Us!
We're on the lookout for talented and motivated people who want to work with us and support our mission.
Join Our Team! Open position:
Other Opportunities
Employment Opportunities at California Hospital Medical Center
LABBN is proudly based at Dignity Health — California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles. Interested in working at the same hospital as us? Several other departments at the hospital are hiring too!
Employment Opportunities Across the Family Strengthening Network In our Stronger Families Blog, we share links to our partners' job opportunities. We also send a monthly email with open positions at these hospitals and community organizations.
Our Partners in L.A. County
LABBN collaborates with a diverse group of partners who are committed to supporting families and improving maternal and child health.
Family Strengthening Oversight Entity (FSOE)
We help lead the Family Strengthening Network Oversight Entity (FSOE), which oversees the First 5 LA-funded network of home visiting programs. The FSOE also includes First 5 LA and Work2Live Well.
Family Strengthening Network
LABBN oversees the Family Strengthening Network — the largest home visiting network in the country — in partnership with the FSOE, and the Los Angeles County Departments of Public Health, Public Social Services, and Mental Health.
The Family Strengthening Network includes 12 hospitals and over two dozen community-based organizations that deliver home visiting services to pregnant people and families with newborns throughout L.A. County. These services use the Healthy Families America, Parents as Teachers, and Welcome Baby home visiting models.
Los Angeles County Perinatal and Early Childhood Home Visitation Consortium
We oversee and manage the Los Angeles County Perinatal and Early Childhood Home Visitation Consortium (the Consortium), an alliance of over 60 home visiting agencies and family strengthening organizations that support and advocate for the county's home visiting programs — regardless of funding source.
Our Other Partners
From influential organizations to leading professionals in their fields, LABBN’s partners represent a wide variety of sectors. LABBN collaborates with them to make sure the county’s home visiting programs have well-trained staff with the infrastructure and support systems needed to help families thrive.
See a complete list of our partners.
