Behind the Scenes: GEEARS and the Southeastern IECMH Summit
GEEARS is an advocacy organization focused on young children, their families, and the people who care for them. But what does advocacy actually look like? Sometimes it’s testifying before a legislative study committee or walking a family through the Capitol to meet their representative. More often, it’s less visible—it’s hundreds of quiet conversations, bringing up babies’ needs in every room we enter, and repeating the same message until the systems begin to shift. That steady, behind-the-scenes work can be hard to visualize and understand.
This blog examines the long, incremental work that leads to transformation, exemplified in this case by the first-ever Southeastern IECMH Summit.
My name is Callan, and I’m the Senior Health Policy Manager at GEEARS. It’s funny-but-true that no one knows what their friends really do for a living. I tell mine I’m a “lobbyist for babies,” which gets a laugh but doesn’t come close to describing the scope of my work. Recently, as part of the team that helped bring the Southeastern IECMH Summit to life, I realized that this gathering was more than a profound meeting of early childhood minds. It was also an accurate reflection of the breadth and depth of GEEARS’ work.
Before I tell you about the Summit, a little context: IECMH stands for infant and early childhood mental health. Clearly, nobody test-marketed this acronym—it’s not exactly catchy! But the idea itself is powerful: young children’s mental health is shaped by a constellation of influences—genetics, experiences, and relationships—that together form the foundation for their lifelong mental well-being. These factors shape how children see the world, build relationships, and eventually fare in school and the workplace.
In 2019, GEEARS supported a Georgia House Study Committee on IECMH, chaired by Rep. Katie Dempsey of Rome. The committee heard from leaders across the state, many of them members of our Georgia Infant-Toddler Coalition. But one of the most memorable presentations came from a colleague who drove over from Alabama to share how her state had advanced this work. Her presentation (punctuated by a “Roll Tide”) inspired the committee to recommend creating an IECMH Director position at Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) and to establish Georgia’s IECMH Taskforce. That Director and the taskforce she now leads, bring together leaders from many child-serving state agencies to build a statewide “system of care” for families. GEEARS and our partners also launched the Georgia Association for Infant Mental Health (GA-AIMH), now housed at Georgia State University, to strengthen the workforce who support young children’s social and emotional health.
In 2020, our colleague in Alabama told South Carolina and Georgia about openings in an upcoming Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) training. (CPP is a therapeutic model for young children and caregivers who have experienced trauma.) With support from DECAL and the Department of Public Health (DPH), GEEARS identified 10 Georgia clinicians who participated in the training. Since then, Georgia has hosted two statewide CPP trainings funded by DECAL, DPH, and the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD), plus a regional training in Northeast Georgia funded by United Way of Northeast Georgia—training more than 100 clinicians in CPP across the state.
But training was only part of the puzzle. Clinicians also didn’t know how to bill Medicaid for CPP. So, the IECMH Taskforce’s Policy and Finance Committee, led by DBHDD and the Department of Community Health (DCH), developed comprehensive Medicaid billing guides.
Between 2020 and 2024, GEEARS and our partners kept plugging away: finding funding for trainings, refining billing guides, and sharing Georgia’s successes locally and nationally. In every room we entered, we talked about brain development, early trauma, and the power of early relationships. Slowly but surely, we began to hear those same messages echoed back by others across the state. IECMH started showing up in state plans, in legislation, and in conversations among leaders, professionals, and even legislators. What began as a niche issue was becoming part of the mainstream.
Meanwhile, the regional spark that helped ignite this work never faded. In 2024, the South Carolina team proposed a regional summit to bring Southeastern states together around IECMH policy and financing strategies. Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia jumped on board. National groups like ZERO TO THREE and the Perigee Fund wanted in.
Then came the big news: Dr. Nadine Burke Harris agreed to keynote. If you don’t live in the early childhood space, let me just say—she’s a rock star. As California’s former surgeon general and author of The Deepest Well, she has been a national leader on understanding and addressing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). She’s also the architect of ACEs Aware, the California initiative that integrated ACEs screening into Medicaid.
Each state brought 10 leaders to the Summit. They represented child-serving agencies, advocacy groups, clinicians, philanthropies, legislatures, and parents. With support from the Perigee Fund, we assembled a powerhouse delegation for Georgia.
The Summit took place in Charleston on September 4th and 5th, marking the first event of its kind in the nation. Of course, Dr. Burke Harris’ keynote was inspiring, the breakout sessions were energizing, and the food was fantastic. But what mattered most to me (and that’s saying a lot, because I’m a foodie) were the notes passed between colleagues, the fervent texts and emails, and our state team brainstorming how to alchemize all these ideas into real change for our littlest Georgians.
The Southeastern IECMH Summit reminded me that advocacy isn’t always loud. Rather, it’s persistent, collaborative, and deeply human. Every connection made, every idea shared, every conversation is part of a larger movement to ensure that young children and their families get the support they need to thrive.
As we return to our states, our agencies, and our communities, our challenge and our opportunity are clear: to take what we’ve learned, turn it into action, and keep showing up for our state’s little ones, families, and early childhood professionals. Because real change doesn’t happen in a single meeting or keynote; it happens when years of relationship-building result in a large and powerful coalition whose collective knowledge, experience, and tenacity make that change.
The Georgia Team: Maxine Elliott, Deputy Director, Medical Assistance Plans, Georgia Department of Community Health; Victrecia Hines, Director of Early Childhood and Child Care Services, Division of Family and Children Services; Demetra Boles, Maternal Mental Health Manager, Georgia Council for Recovery; Dr. Christy Doyle, Senior Director of the Office of Children and Youth, Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities; Dr. Laura Jane Miller, Child Psychiatrist, Emory; Ebony Johnson, Senior Director, Bright Future, United Way of Greater Atlanta; Callan Wells, Senior Health Policy Manager, GEEARS; Laura Lucas, IECMH Director, Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning; Rep. Katie Dempsey, Georgia House of Representatives; Raynell Washington, Director, Georgia Association of Infant Mental Health