Hello Baby is a voluntary program for parents of newborns in Allegheny County designed to strengthen families, improve children’s outcomes, and maximize child and family well-being, safety, and security. While all families with newborns will have the opportunity to participate in the Universal Tier, referrals to the Support and Priority Tiers can originate through three different approaches: (1) self-referral; (2) provider referral; and (3) the Hello Baby predictive risk model. This talk will discuss the development of the Hello Baby predictive risk model – both the technical aspects as well as issues around social license (including the multiple guardrails necessary for such a use case).

Rhema Vaithianathan (along with collaborator Emily Putnam Hornstein, UNC_Chapel Hill) have conducted extensive research on the use of predictive risk modeling in Child Welfare, and are best known for their development of the Allegheny Family Screening Tool.

Link to video of the presentation: https://vimeo.com/760293647