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QI in Action: Supporting Healthy Beginnings Through Digital Care
We spotlight QI Awards 2025 Healthcare Measurement category.
The first 2,000 days, from conception to age five, play an important role in shaping a child’s development, health and wellbeing. However, for many families, navigating the demands of early childhood can make it challenging to access and engage with critical child and family health services.
We are proud to spotlight the winner of the Healthcare Measurement category in the 2025 ACHS Quality Improvement Awards, Hunter New England Local Health District (HNELHD), NSW.
At HNELHD, the team identified an opportunity to provide families with accessible, evidence-based health information throughout their child’s early years through the initiative, 'Healthy Beginnings for HNE Kids: from pilot to HNE-wide scale-up.'
Taking an evidence-based approach
Healthy Beginnings for HNE Kids is an evidence-based digital model of care that provides parents with age- and stage-aligned text messages from birth to five years. Each message provides practical and trusted health information covering areas such as nutrition, child development, parental wellbeing and healthy habits.
The program was developed through years of research and co-design, bringing together more than 40 stakeholders, including parents, clinicians, Aboriginal and multicultural health workers and policy partners. This collaborative approach helped ensure the program reflected the needs of the families it was designed to support.
Rather than relying solely on families attending health services to access information, the digital model provides support directly to parents throughout their child’s early years, helping make preventative health information more accessible and relevant to families in their everyday lives.
Measuring the impact
Measurement has been central to understanding the impact of the program and supporting its expansion across HNELHD.
More than 85% of families have connected with the program, while 90% of families reported that they valued it. The team has also seen measurable improvements in breastfeeding, healthy eating, including fruit and vegetable intake, as well as childcare and wellbeing.
These results provided evidence that the approach was reaching families and contributing to positive changes in health behaviours and wellbeing.
From pilot to scale
What began as a pilot has now grown into a district-wide program, connecting with families across more than 49 sites and reaching around 10,000 families each year.
The initiative demonstrates how quality improvement can use evidence, co-design and measurement to develop an approach, understand its impact and scale it across a health service. It also highlights the role of measurement in supporting a learning health system, where data and feedback can inform ongoing improvement.
For the HNELHD team, the impact of the program is ultimately reflected in the experiences of the families it supports. Hearing families share how the program has made a difference to them, and recommend it to others, provides a powerful reminder of the value of accessible and preventative healthcare.
Healthy Beginnings for HNE Kids demonstrates how quality improvement can turn evidence into action, using measurement and collaboration to strengthen preventative healthcare and deliver improvements at scale.
Read the full project on pg. 71 of the Quality Initiatives: the 28th ACHS Quality Improvement Awards. Watch the team accept the QI award at the ACHS Annual Awards Ceremony 2025 here.
