Act Early Response to COVID-19: Year 2

Participating States/Territories
Year 2 Act Early Response to COVID-19 Team Leadership Roster

Year 2 Overview
During Year 2 of this project, 41 Act Early Ambassador-led/co-led Response Teams received $94,000 each to provide support to families with young children across the country by bolstering collaboration among early childhood programs and systems. Response Teams will develop, implement, and evaluate a work plan to improve early identification during the COVID-19 pandemic that addresses all four steps of early identification of developmental delays and disabilities (parent-engaged developmental monitoring using “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” (LTSAE), developmental screening, referral for early intervention services, and receipt of early intervention services) and supports families in transitioning from step to step to reduce loss to follow up. Response Teams are also using this second year of funding to support family, child, provider, and/or community resiliency especially within communities disproportionally affected by COVID-19 and/or COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

Evaluation Activities
Evaluation of the Act Early Response to COVID-19 project consists of activities to evaluate the project overall as well as activities to evaluate each of the 41 Response Teams’ individual projects. The primary goal of the evaluation is to demonstrate how and to what extent the project was implemented and to describe the activities conducted in support of project objectives. Evaluation activities include:

Development of a multi-site evaluation plan
Development and implementation of 41 state and territory evaluation plans for each Response Team
Quarterly metrics monitoring and reporting
Data dashboards to visualize quarterly metrics- for more information, click here
Surveys implemented at midpoint and end of the project to assess progress towards achieving goals and objectives
Evaluation Advisory Group of Response Team members to support the evaluation
Evaluation-specific technical assistance

This effort was supported with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cooperative agreement 6 NU38OT000280-02-02).

Learn more by visiting CDC's Act Early Response to COVID-19 Webpage