Bridging Infant Mental Health Screening and Intervention from NICU to Home: A Single-Center Quality Improvement Project

Having an infant admitted to a NICU increases parental anxiety, depression and traumatic stress, heightens infants’ developmental and mental health risk, and may disrupt infant–parent relationships. Early Connections is a dyadic, trauma-informed universal infant mental health program implemented at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Child–Parent Psychotherapy-informed dyadic psychological intervention is offered during admission in the NICU. The Parent Navigator model utilizes a parent with lived NICU experience to support linkage to early intervention as families transition home. Finally, a psychologist provides infant mental health screening and tiered intervention in the interdisciplinary outpatient Newborn Follow-up Program (NFP), a high-risk infant follow-up clinic. This manuscript describes preliminary findings from a single-center quality improvement project to explore implementation of the program from December 2025 through March 2026. Of the 63 (55.3%) families who met with the NICU psychologist, 88.9% had at least one infant mental health family session and 65.1% had more than one infant mental health session during their child’s admission. Of the 66 (57.9%) supported by the parent navigator, 90.9% completed applications for early intervention for their infant; future follow-up will determine the outcome of the application for services. Based on outpatient infant mental health screening conducted with 85 patients (50.5% of those who had appointments), 23.6% of infants and 40.0% of toddlers screened in the NFP were at risk for social–emotional concerns, suggesting there may be a continued need for ongoing screening and intervention following discharge from intensive care. As the needs of families and infants change across inpatient and outpatient medical settings, it is important to offer multiple opportunities to screen needs flexibly and provide tiered intervention.