Health services have been a priority for Head Start since its inception and remain a core need for the more than 1 million children enrolled in Head Start and Early Head Start programs each year.

Drawing on survey data from 73% of Head Start and Early Head Start program health managers, the 2012-2013 Head Start Health Manager Descriptive Study explores the context and delivery of health-related activities and programming for Head Start and Early Head Start programs. This is the first study to look at the role of the health manager in nearly 20 years.

The report also reveals the insights and needs of staff who implement health components. Health managers are well-credentialed, with two-thirds holding at least a bachelor's degree and 86% reporting a health-related educational background. They describe their work as demanding but fulfilling, requiring coordination with program staff and community stakeholders, as well as the trust of Head Start families. Most cite a need for ongoing training and professional development in evidence-based health services and more streamlined access to standards and resources. These and other insights should help inform program managers to better support these front-line professionals. (author abstract)

This video from the 2016 Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) describes the Work Support Strategies (WSS) initiative and reviews outcomes and implementation experiences from the multistate evaluation. WSS is designed to streamline the delivery of work supports to eligible families.

This video from the 2016 Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) describes the Family Options Study, which is a random assignment study examining the impact of housing and services for homeless families in twelve communities across the United States. Topics covered include the study design, findings from the first 18 months, and the services needs of the families involved in the study.

This video from the 2016 Research and Evaluation Conference on Self-Sufficiency (RECS) reviews findings from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project as well as lessons learned and next steps for this work. The BIAS portfolio included initiatives in the domains of work supports, child support, and child care.

This report summarizes findings of a literature review and research syntheses in three areas — implementation science, early care and education quality, and costs. The goal of this effort was to create a draft conceptual framework to guide development of measures for the implementation and costs of early care and education in center-based settings that serve children from birth to age 5.

The literature helped identify what is important to examine for variations in implementation and costs that can affect quality to inform the field. It also helped determine the next steps in efforts to create a technically sound, feasible, and useful instrument that will provide consistent, systematic measures of implementation and costs of high quality early care and education. (author abstract)

This report describes three potential designs for studies to assess the needs for early care and education and home visiting among American Indian and Alaska Native children and families.

For each of the three options, the report presents:

• the key research questions,
• the population of interest,
• suggested measures, and,
• potential data sources, including primary data collection or existing data sources available for secondary analysis.

The report concludes with a summary of each design and future considerations. (author abstract)

New research is needed to learn more about how, when, and why Latino parents access certain early childhood programs and services, and not others. As highlighted in this brief series, numerous existing large-scale data sets offer potentially valuable information about the ECE experiences of Hispanic populations. This brief on Latino child care search and decision-making focuses in particular on what these studies have to offer about how Hispanic families seek out and select ECE settings. Researchers can use this review and associated data tables to identify the study/studies, samples, and variables most appropriate for their research questions. (author abstract)