SUMMARY ABSTRACT Maternal and child health is critical to achieving the Healthy People 2030 Goals. Investing in integrated nurturing care interventions from preconception through childhood and adolescence defines one’s developmental trajectory with benefits that accumulate across the life course and promote social justice (i.e., taking equity one step further by fixing the systems for generations to come). COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted essential nurturing care services such as prenatal, perinatal, and pediatric services. As a result, over a million preventable child and maternal deaths globally are projected to occur due to extreme poverty and household food insecurity (HFI; lack of consistent access to enough healthful food for an active, healthy life due to limited financial resources). Amid the COVID-19, HFI in the US tripled among households with children (~19.5%), disproportionately burdening marginalized low income and families of color. HFI is strongly linked with racial/ethnic inequities and adverse maternal-child health and nutrition outcomes. Integrating effective food security interventions within nurturing care services as a COVID-19 response & recovery efforts is an achievable strategy to promote equity. The West Las Vegas Promise Neighborhood (WLVPN) is an intervention addressing social determinants of health to reduce structural racism amid COVID-19 in historically racial/ethnic marginalized communities in the Southwest US. The WLVPN is implemented by over 50 multi- sector partners in key life domains (health, education, employment, housing, and social justice) coordinated by Nevada Partners, Inc., with whom we have a solid and long-term collaboration. While WLVPN social intervention is a unique opportunity and platform to address endemic inequities in maternal-child mortality and food insecurity levels, it lacks focus on maternal-child health and nutrition. Therefore, our partnership with Nevada Partners, Inc. is well-placed for promoting the maternal-child component within WLVPN and advancing implementation and equity research. Our community-based participatory approach will use a racial equity framework to co-create WITH the community an intervention to integrate maternal-child health and nutrition consisted of a bundle of effective food security interventions retrieved from the literature (e.g., universal screening, community referral, monitoring system, and nutrition-focused counseling strategies) adapted and integrated into the nurturing care services within WLVPN communities. A Hybrid Type III quasi-experimental within-site will be designed to 1) develop and implement an equity-focused system-level intervention to integrate maternal-child health and nutrition and 2) assess the effectiveness of this intervention in decreasing levels of food insecurity and/or improve health outcomes of pregnant women and their young children under the age of 3, which will nurture their potentials, enabling them to thrive. This project is des...