Pediatric practices should seek to engage families as a powerful resource for achieving child health and life-long well-being. Children have a better chance of receiving the care they need when their caregivers feel comfortable asking questions of their child’s health care team, providing information to guide the care plan, and sharing areas of struggle or need. Family-centered care that promotes joint decision-making between the family and health care provider has become widely accepted in the pediatric field, but it is not always embedded into clinical practice. By engaging family members as equal members of the care team, health care providers can build on a family’s strengths and co-create care plans that are more likely to achieve better outcomes.

This implementation fact sheet offers strategies that pediatric practices can use in meaningfully engaging patients and families to inform both care delivery as well as broader health care system improvements.