2022 Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap

The Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap provides guidance to state leaders on the most effective investments states can make to ensure all children thrive from the start. Grounded in the science of the developing child and based on comprehensive reviews of the most rigorous evidence available, the Roadmap provides detailed information on five effective policies and six effective strategies that foster the nurturing environments infants and toddlers need, and that reduce longstanding disparities in access and outcomes among racial and ethnic groups and socioeconomic statuses. The Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap is an annual guide for each state to:

• Assess the wellbeing of its infants and toddlers and prioritize state PN-3 policy goals;
• Identify the evidence-based policy solutions proven to impact PN-3 policy goals;
• Monitor states’ adoption and implementation of the 11 effective Roadmap policies and strategies;
• Track the impact that policy changes have on improving the wellbeing of children and families and reducing disparities between racial and ethnic groups.

In this Roadmap, we provide a summary of the progress that states have made over the last year toward full and equitable implementation of the 11 effective policies and strategies. The Roadmap also includes demographic characteristics of infants and toddlers across the U.S., and for each state, as well as a set of 20 outcome measures that illustrate how the wellbeing of children and families varies across states. Additional details, including extensive information on the impact that each solution has on the eight PN-3 policy goals, the choices that states can make to effectively implement them, the progress states have made in the past year toward implementation, and how states compare to each other in their generosity and reach of the policies and strategies is provided in a profile for each policy and strategy.