The Healthy Families Study
Mentor 1
Joshua Mersky
Mentor 2
Leah Coe
Location
Union Wisconsin Room
Start Date
28-4-2017 1:30 PM
End Date
28-4-2017 4:00 PM
Description
In 2010, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established the MIECHV (Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting) program. Since it was established, MIECHV has distributed $2.5 billion nationwide to support evidence-based home visiting. It's important to note, research on home visiting programs, even those that are evidence-based, have proven mixed results. Although most home visiting programs use long-term service models, it's still unclear how long the services should be.The Healthy Families Study is a randomized trial of two home visiting programs at the Milwaukee Health Department. One program, Empowering Families of Milwaukee (EFM), is a long-term model that begins prenatally and lasts up to three years postpartum. The second program, Parents Nurturing and Caring for their Children (PNCC), begins prenatally as well, but provides less intensive services than EFM and is only available up to 60 days postpartum. The study compares clients who were randomly assigned to EFM or PNCC to each other and to a third group of participants that were referred to the Health Department for home visiting but did not receive services. Over the course of 12 months, participants in the three groups completed a series of assessments to record changes in maternal and child outcomes.This study focused on health-related outcomes of mothers in all three study groups up to six months postpartum. Results showed that, compared to women who received PNCC services and women who did not receive home visiting services, women served by EFM were more likely to have breastfed (OR=3.25, p=0.02). No major between-group differences were observed in maternal physical or mental health, however.The findings reinforce prior research indicating that home visiting programs often produce inconsistent results. Suggestions to increase the effectiveness of the programs will be discussed.
The Healthy Families Study
Union Wisconsin Room
In 2010, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act established the MIECHV (Maternal Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting) program. Since it was established, MIECHV has distributed $2.5 billion nationwide to support evidence-based home visiting. It's important to note, research on home visiting programs, even those that are evidence-based, have proven mixed results. Although most home visiting programs use long-term service models, it's still unclear how long the services should be.The Healthy Families Study is a randomized trial of two home visiting programs at the Milwaukee Health Department. One program, Empowering Families of Milwaukee (EFM), is a long-term model that begins prenatally and lasts up to three years postpartum. The second program, Parents Nurturing and Caring for their Children (PNCC), begins prenatally as well, but provides less intensive services than EFM and is only available up to 60 days postpartum. The study compares clients who were randomly assigned to EFM or PNCC to each other and to a third group of participants that were referred to the Health Department for home visiting but did not receive services. Over the course of 12 months, participants in the three groups completed a series of assessments to record changes in maternal and child outcomes.This study focused on health-related outcomes of mothers in all three study groups up to six months postpartum. Results showed that, compared to women who received PNCC services and women who did not receive home visiting services, women served by EFM were more likely to have breastfed (OR=3.25, p=0.02). No major between-group differences were observed in maternal physical or mental health, however.The findings reinforce prior research indicating that home visiting programs often produce inconsistent results. Suggestions to increase the effectiveness of the programs will be discussed.
