Projects that are in progress
House Bill 23-1027 was passed to promote high quality family time in Colorado. The Colorado Lab is partnering with the High Quality Parenting Time Task Force to conduct a statewide study on parenting time practices and develop data-informed recommendations on best practice standards for delivering family time that drive positive outcomes for children, youth, and families.
This project will inform Colorado’s efforts to increase college attainment by supporting students’ needs for food and related human services. Many college students struggle with food insecurity, and evidence increasingly suggests that food insecurity can act as a barrier to postsecondary success. Colorado state agencies and postsecondary institutions are looking for ways to expand student participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to ensure that students receive nutritional support and to advance equity in postsecondary education.
The Colorado Lab, in colloraboration with Colorado Equitable Economic Mobility Initiative and Trendlines Colorado, propose to launch the Colorado Wages and Outcomes Results Coalition (Colorado WORC) to measure learner outcomes and equity gaps. This four-year initiative aims build stronger evidence of effectiveness for a cohort of training and postsecondary providers operating in Colorado.
CAPABLE (Community Aging in Place–Advancing Better Living for Elders) is a program developed by Johns Hopkins University to improve quality of life, improve functional ability, reduce hospitalizations, and reduce nursing home admissions in older adults. The Colorado Lab will evaluate the CAPABLE program in Colorado.
This project will evaluate programs offering different cash supports to clients of three Colorado training and career development nonprofits. This project is a partnership with the Colorado Equitable Economic Mobility Initiative (CEEMI).
This qualitative research study will elicit experiential data from birthing individuals impacted by substance use/substance use disorders, from pregnancy through the first year postpartum. By including the perceptions and experiences of those with lived expertise, data on barriers and facilitators to cross-system care coordination for family well-being and perinatal health can be understood from multiple vantage points.
Substance use during pregnancy is a growing issue that demands cross-system solutions. The Colorado Lab, Illuminate Colorado, and the Kempe Center are collaboratively leading a four-year pilot to develop a data-informed strategic framework for coordinated Plan of Safe Care service delivery and tracking across Colorado.
The Colorado Child Abuse Prevention Trust Fund provides leadership, collaborative support, and advising and makes recommendations regarding child maltreatment prevention planning, implementation, alignment, and investments across Colorado, with a statutorily-defined focus on primary and secondary prevention. The Colorado Lab is developing a multi-year Prevention Investment Strategy Plan that promotes better data-informed decision-making and smart state investments in child maltreatment prevention.
The Colorado Department of Early Childhood (CDEC) received stimulus funds in 2021 and 2022 to fund recovery efforts for the child care industry. The strategic focus is on strengthening and expanding the early childhood sector in Colorado to ensure all children have access to high-quality child care. The Colorado Lab serves as the research and evaluation hub for these stimulus-funded activities on behalf of CDEC.
The Colorado Evaluation and Action Lab is supporting the Imagination Library of Colorado (ILCO) in assessing the impact the book program is having on kindergarten readiness. Because the state of Colorado does not collect student-level kindergarten-readiness data, a statewide study is not possible.