About the Family Impact Seminars

The Family Impact Seminars (FIS) — a series of seminars, discussion sessions, and briefing reports—provide state policymakers with nonpartisan, solution-oriented research on family issues such as after-school programs, children’s health insurance, early childhood care and education, juvenile crime, and welfare reform. The Family Impact Seminars were created to better connect research and policy, and to promote a family impact and racial equity lens in policymaking. Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia are part of the Family Impact Institute for Family Impact Seminars network and are currently conducting Family Impact Seminars in their capitals.

These seminars are designed to provide an independent research service in partnership with state policymakers, including legislators, legislative aides, governor’s office staff, legislative service agency staff, and agency representatives. The traditional format of the 2-hour seminars consists of three 20-minute presentations given by a panel of premier researchers, program directors, and policy analysts. For each seminar, discussion sessions are held and a background briefing report summarizes high-quality research on the issue in a succinct, easy-to-understand format. Each state conducts one or two seminars a year, usually in the state capitol building, on an issue identified by a bipartisan group of state legislators. The seminars are sponsored primarily by universities and Cooperative Extension.

This model builds on a university-based, team-focused infrastructure of researchers and policymakers that allows for sustainable, ongoing policy influence. Faculty serve in the role as seminar directors, coordinating the seminar event and follow-up materials that present current researchers and their findings to state legislators in a timely, relevant fashion.

The Family Impact Seminars model has supported evidence-informed child and family policy deliberations within hundreds of state legislative sessions across the country – informing policymakers’ decisions over three decades. It has been successful to date because it relies on bipartisan policy advisors to inform the timeliness and relevance of seminar content. However, its impact can be strengthened with a few proposed optimizations.

Goals

This project seeks to build replicable infrastructure for implementing the Family Impact Seminars model so that we can rigorously evaluate its impact across multiple state contexts. The infrastructure involves training faculty members on the implementation process and having them develop a system of operations that enable them to directly engage state legislatures.

We expect more equitable and evidence-informed policies will benefit children, families, and communities, as well as benefiting advocates, evidence brokers, intermediaries, and others in policy practice.