JBA to Lead National Knowledge-Building Effort on Home Visiting in Indigenous Communities

JBA will lead a national effort to build knowledge about early childhood home visiting in Indigenous communities, thanks to a 5-year contract awarded by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families. The award is the latest for JBA’s Tribal Evaluation practice area.

JBA will administer the Center for Indigenous Research Collaborations and Learning (CIRCLE-HV) in partnership with the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Center. The center will take an innovative approach to knowledge building by—

• Financially supporting researchers and evaluators on topics of shared interest with Indigenous home visiting programs
• Partnering with Indigenous home visiting programs to pursue cross-site research and evaluation on shared priority topics

The project team will actively engage with an array of Indigenous home visiting programs through federally recognized tribal nations, American Indian and Alaska Native communities, Native Hawaiians, U.S. Pacific territories, members of state-recognized tribes, urban Indian organizations, and tribal consortia. Programs engaged in the center’s work will include those that receive funding through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, along with funding from other sources, says Project Director Erin Geary.

Input will also be gathered from a community expert group comprising thought leaders and representatives from the fields of home visiting, Indigenous human services and early childhood practice, and research. The center’s planning efforts will result in a brief of innovative, community-engaged research methods relevant to Indigenous research-practice collaborations.