By MARTY LEVINE

James Huguley’s Parent Heart program arose from the realization, he says, that parents who need extra help, particularly African-American parents, can usually find more help for their kids than for themselves.

“If you are targeting youth, you need something that will approach the whole family,” says Huguley, a School of Social Work associate professor. Now Parent Heart has been named Startup of the Year by the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for 2025, and Huguley has been working with them to move the program toward commercialization.

He is in the midst of extensive paperwork, he says, required to get Parent Heart designated as a public benefit corporation, which by law must balance the needs of owners, employees and the public interest, such as supporting charitable organizations. Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream maker, is probably the best-known example of such a business.

Parent Heart began by developing programming in partnership with local nonprofits, including Homewood Children’s Village and Awaken Pittsburgh. Parents who participate in Parent Heart trainings (mostly in-person, but also online) find it to be “an intimate experience,” Huguley says. “People coming in are looking for skills but often leave thinking I am not alone in this.

“We bring people together,” he explains. Sometimes “we only present 15 to 20 minutes of content but we let people connect to each other,” trading local resources.

“I can’t tell them who to call when they need something at Westinghouse or CAPA (two Pittsburgh Public high schools) or a private school. We build relationships. Last night people were exchanging phone numbers” during a Parent Heart session with the nonprofit Macedonia FACE (Family And Community Enrichment center) in Oakland.

At the center of Parent Heart are four focal areas: mental health and wellness, dealing with structural racism, gaining a positive racial identity for youth and coping with discrimination.

The path toward commercialization for Huguley began long before this year. He first won a grant through the Pitt Innovation Challenge (PInCh), and worked with Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship personnel, eventually becoming a Fellow of Pitt’s EI3 (Empowering Innovation, Incubation and Impact) program, which has connected him with mentors and expertise.

Today he is busy finding new community organizations interested in delivering his program to parents facing adversity. Parent Heart comes in six-, nine- and 12-week versions that can be customized to a particular organization’s needs. The program sometimes even includes meals and child care to help parents participate. The curriculum includes parenting for social success in under-resourced schools.

Commercialization, Huguley admits, “was a word that I didn’t embrace right away.” But when seeking funding for the program, he realized this was the route to go. Most often, faculty receive funding to expand programs by seeking grants to do research surrounding an idea — and helping parents in this manner has long been the focus of Huguley’s academic work.

But commercialization is most common for the natural sciences and medicine, he notes: “A lot of us in social sciences don’t think of commercialization.” But “to deliver this on a larger scale” seemed to require this move, and he is today “very mission-driven: How can we get these tools in the hands of more people?

“There are only a handful of entities I’ve seen that do the kind of work I do from a University platform,” he pointed out. “How do you make the impossible choices families are making? How do they navigate under-resourced schools? Even if they get a scholarship to a private school, how do they manage social isolation? We’d like to develop more partnerships and expand our geographic footprint.”

He has already provided Parent Heart to many local schools and nonprofits. Now, with the help he is getting through his innovation award, Huguley is even talking to organizations in Ohio and in Baltimore about using Parent Heart. “There are other cities that have similar challenges and needs, and we are trying to offer similar opportunities for families.

“I’m rolling the dice here,” he says of his partial, unpaid leave to undertake this task. “It’s been good. I’ve been learning a lot,” from operations to human resources and legal requirements.

“We’re not a household name yet; we haven’t won the lottery; none of those miracles have happened yet,” he says. However, he adds, “we are excited to build our partnership network of organizations looking for evidence-based parental support and who are looking for the opportunity to invest in public works that have had proven success.”

Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.

 

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