Our Work

From 2011 through its final initiatives in 2026, Coffective worked with public health agencies, WIC programs, hospitals, clinics, community organizations, and state partners to strengthen care around pregnancy, birth, feeding, and early parenting. States represented in this work: Arizona, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. This page looks back at how Coffective helped partners prepare families, strengthen clinical care, connect state priorities with local needs, build community partnerships, and share tools that remain useful to those continuing to support families.

Prepare Families With Consistent Guidance

Coffective helped partners give families clearer, more consistent guidance during key moments before and after birth. Families could hear familiar messages from multiple trusted sources, including WIC, hospitals, and community partners. Materials such as handouts, posters, and mobile app content helped partners:

  • Prepare families for birth, feeding, and recovery
  • Help families recognize supportive care and know when to ask for help
  • Give staff shared language they could use across roles and settings

Improve Care Around Birth and Feeding

Coffective helped clinical teams strengthen the care families experienced around birth and feeding. This work focused on whether families received the care teams wanted them to experience, where care and outcomes differed, and how hospitals could improve with input from families and community partners. Coffective helped clinical teams:

  • Train staff and providers to support evidence-based birth and feeding care, including skin-to-skin contact, rooming-in, feeding cues, hand expression, and support after birth
  • Support quality improvement and hospital designation efforts with training, tools, coaching, and opportunities to share learning
  • Gather family feedback, staff input, and race-stratified care data to see whether families experienced care as intended
  • Form hospital-community task forces that helped hospital and community leaders build trust, share priorities, and guide improvement together
  • Use shared power, rotating leadership, and shared decision-making so community partners could shape changes in care

Connect State Priorities to Local Needs

Coffective helped state and local partners connect broad maternal and child health goals with what communities were seeing in practice. State partners could see patterns across communities, connect programs, and share resources. Local partners knew what families were asking for, which services were available, where relationships were strong, and where gaps remained. Coffective helped partners:

  • Gather and organize input from communities, programs, and state partners
  • Use that input to set priorities, clarify roles, and guide planning
  • Align resources, training, materials, and technical assistance with community needs
  • Keep planning moving through workgroups, shared calls, and follow-up

Strengthen Access Through Local Partnerships

At the local level, communities focused on challenges families and staff were seeing most often, especially when support existed but was hard to find, reach, or continue. Through Community Partnership Collaboratives and technical assistance, Coffective helped partners strengthen relationships, learn what each organization offered, and choose projects that fit their community. Local projects helped communities:

  • Bring lactation support closer to families through in-home visits, free appointments, and services in places families already visit
  • Make education and support easier to access with flexible scheduling, incentives, transportation help, and child-friendly spaces
  • Expand who could support families through lactation training, peer counselor training, doula access, and staff tools
  • Make feeding and lactation easier in workplaces, public spaces, and during emergencies
  • Create clearer referral and follow-up processes between hospitals, public health programs, and community-based organizations

Share Lessons From Local Work

Local projects left behind materials shaped by the decisions communities made along the way. Agendas, training outlines, referral forms, outreach letters, and resource guides showed how communities turned shared goals into tools staff could use.

Coffective helped partners share those materials and the thinking behind them through technical assistance, Community Partnership Collaborative check-ins, sharing calls, and dashboard resources. That helped other agencies understand what partners were trying to solve, what changed along the way, and how they might adapt a tool for a similar need.

With Gratitude

Thank you to the partners, families, communities, and Coffective team members who shared their time, knowledge, care, and trust. The work described here came from their shared effort and commitment to supporting families across maternal and child health.

In 2026, Coffective completed its final initiatives. While Coffective’s formal work has ended, its legacy continues through the materials partners still use, the relationships they strengthened, the local examples they shared, and the care they continue to provide in their communities.