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Evaluating and Supporting Pennsylvania’s Home Visiting Programs

Statement of Problem

Home visiting programs provide voluntary, in-home services to under-resourced pregnant mothers and families of young children. Since 2010, the Health and Resources Administration (HRSA) in partnership with the Administration of Children and Families (ACF) has supported the expansion of evidence-based home visiting programs into communities across the country through the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program. MIECHV allows states, territories, and tribal entities to maintain and grow the evidence-based or promising programs of their choice—all of which support important aspects of child and family well-being including maternal and caregiver health, parenting and child development promotion approaches and school readiness.

The MIECHV investment supports states’ growth of evidence-based and promising home visiting services along with evaluation of home visiting performance. The focus on evaluation is critical, as the impact of these programs may be influenced by the way they are implemented across a diversity of clients, staff, health systems, and geographies within and across states nationwide. 

Part of the multi-pronged data and evaluation requirements for MIECHV include a required needs assessment conducted every four years to identify the communities most in need of services and assess current capacity of home visiting programming so they can strategically allocate resources for these community-based public health services. Needs assessments are foundational public health tools for assessing a population’s risks, strengths, opportunities and trends over time.

Description

Next Steps

The team continues to disseminate the needs assessment findings to communities across Pennsylvania, breaking down the results into digestible briefs and blog posts focused on specific issues. We also continue to be involved in work to evaluate and support family-serving programs in the Commonwealth and are designing and testing innovative new models of delivering community-based family support programs in collaboration with health systems

This project page was last updated in September 2022.

Suggested Citation

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PolicyLab. Evaluating and Supporting Pennsylvania’s Home Visiting Programs [online]. Available at: http://www.policylab.chop.edu. [Accessed: plug in date accessed here].