Table 3 Recommendations to address racial inequities and exemplar quotes.

Redistribute power by treating families as true care partners through orientation, education, and support rather than disciplinary action.

“So… acknowledge the people that is trying, that is caring, that wants their child to be healthy. Give them parents plans. Give them… goals. ‘Hey, we wanna do this. Six months, this should happen,’ or, ‘three months, where we can be here.’” - Black parent

“We could create like a peer support person, um…to walk the mother through, within the first 24 to 72 hours” - Staff

“Rather than giving you the support that you’re longing for. What do we say when a child acts out? They need attention. They just want to be heard. Same thing on an adult when they act out. Something’s lacking. They need something… Let’s get to the root of the problem. Let’s sit this family down. Maybe this family needs some extra support. Maybe this family isn’t being heard.” - Black parent

Transform space and staff to promote humanism and inclusion through diversification of staff, minimum criteria for parent-staff interactions, and reduced workload for staff.

“Every child deserves that extra lift of care. Every child deserves that extra minute of research. Every child deserves that extra thought second of, “maybe this can work.” - Black parent

“Acknowledge you messed up. Acknowledge you read that paper wrong. Acknowledge you miscalculated those numbers. Acknowledge it because when we find it, and we find an error and you don’t acknowledge it, it makes us feel like you’re just doing your job with no compassion and no care in the world.” - Black parent

“I think it’ll be nice if they had like little daily... Little daily surveys for each, like… like, NICU room, you know? Let’s go over our hospitality. How are you -- how are you -- feel like you’re being treated? How do you feel like your childcare is going? How do you -- are you -- feel like you’re being heard?” - Black parent

Mitigate harm experienced within and outside of the NICU through peer support and resource allocation (social drivers of health) for families.

Regarding focus groups: “It was good to know that there was a lot of other families that went through the same things that I went through and that I wasn’t crazy. It was just nice to hear. I felt it very therapeutic and kind of relieving. It felt good to listen to other moms talk about their journeys and what they experienced in the ICN. It took me a while to reflect on them [my emotions]. I had a day to myself the day after to kind of work on them just because it brought up a lot of old trauma I guess from the ICN that I hadn’t worked on yet but it helped. It helped a lot.” - Black parent

“We need an outpatient social worker. Not just an inpatient.” - Latinx parent

“More resources for our families. Yeah, more support services and also the family advisory council. We need more diversity for sure.” - Black parent

“I would like to see a psychologist on staff, or multiple psychologists on staff because there is one of me and 60 families so I can’t spend the amount of time in providing support. So at least as many social workers, at least as many psychologists as there are social workers so that families can actually have the space to talk about what is happening and how they struggle.” - Staff