Family-professional partnerships help ensure health care programs and policies are appropriate and well-utilized. While including parents as equal members of their child’s care team is an accepted standard for pediatric care, the core principles of family engagement have not been widely adopted as drivers of health care systems improvement. Hear from two statewide projects – a parent leadership training program and a hospital learning collaborative – that are integrating families as equal partners in addressing system issues. They discuss what it really takes to foster an effective and sustainable collaboration.