© 2025 First 5 Center for Children’s Policy. All rights reserved.
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This moment in history could be pivotal in the landscape of California’s early childhood mental health. Conditions created by the pandemic, such as isolation, economic stress, and community trauma, are all proven to negatively impact a child’s ability to thrive. It is vitally important that young children and their parents and caregivers receive the interventions necessary to support their mental health during this critical time.
Dyadic care models like HealthySteps provide important support to families with young children. Such care is particularly important in this pandemic- recovery time, which exacerbated mental health concerns, family stress, isolation, and income insecurity, particularly for BIPOC families who already face health inequity due to structural racism and oppression.
Before joining the Center, Alexandra was a program officer at First 5 LA. In L.A. she supported local implementation of Help Me Grow, a national model to improve developmental screening rates and s ...
On August 4, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first pill for postpartum depression (PPD), marking a significant milestone in treating a condition that affects one in five California women.
In California, Black women are roughly four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than women in all other racial/ethnic groups. California’s Black infants are almost three times more likely to die than white infants, regardless of the mother’s education and income. Indeed, a Black woman with an advanced degree is more likely to lose her baby than a white woman with less than an eighth-grade education.
The last four years have been a time of tremendous transformation in the Medi-Cal program, including reforms that impact young children and call on Medi-Cal managed care plans to work more closely with community partners.
A recent poll found more than two-thirds of California's parents of young children are worried about their families' mental health. As such, interventions like Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (ECMH) are more critical than ever.
© 2025 First 5 Center for Children’s Policy. All rights reserved.