Evaluation of a Family Connects Dissemination to Four High-Poverty Rural Counties.

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2022-05

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Abstract

Objectives

Home visiting is a popular approach to improving the health and well-being of families with infants and young children in the United States; but, to date, no home visiting program has achieved population impact for families in rural communities. The current report includes evaluation results from the dissemination of a brief, universal postpartum home visiting program to four high-poverty rural counties.

Methods

The study utilized a quasi-experimental design. From Sept. 1, 2014-Dec. 31, 2015, families of all 994 resident births in four rural eastern North Carolina counties were assigned to receive Family Connects (FC; intervention group). A representative subsample of families participated in impact evaluation when the infants were 6 months old: 392 intervention group families and 126 families with infants born between Feb. 1, 2014-July 31, 2014 (natural comparison group). Data were analyzed preliminarily for reporting to funders in 2016 and, more comprehensively, using propensity score matching in 2020.

Results

Of FC-eligible families, 78% initiated participation; 83% of participating families completed the program (net completion = 65%). At age 6 months, intervention parents reported more community connections, more frequent use of community services, greater social support, and greater success with infants sleeping on their backs. Intervention infants had fewer total emergency department and urgent care visits. Intervention parents had more total emergency department and urgent care visits and (marginally) fewer overnights in the hospital.

Conclusions for practice

FC can be implemented successfully in high-poverty rural communities with broad reach and positive benefits for infants and families.

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Published Version (Please cite this version)

10.1007/s10995-021-03297-y

Publication Info

Goodman, W Benjamin, Kenneth A Dodge, Yu Bai, Robert A Murphy and Karen O'Donnell (2022). Evaluation of a Family Connects Dissemination to Four High-Poverty Rural Counties. Maternal and child health journal, 26(5). pp. 1067–1076. 10.1007/s10995-021-03297-y Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/25479.

This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.

Scholars@Duke

Bai

Yu Bai

Statistician III
Murphy

Robert A. Murphy

Associate Professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Dr. Murphy is a licensed clinical psychologist focused on child traumatic stress, including its treatment and prevention and development and dissemination of evidence-based interventions. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Murphy serves as Executive Director for the Center for Child & Family Health (CCFH), a community and three university partnership (Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina Central University) dedicated to research, training, and intervention related to child trauma and maltreatment. Interests include treatment and prevention of child maltreatment and traumatic stress, dissemination of evidence based interventions, and improving mental health care for military families. In partnership with the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy Center for Child and Family Policy, he has been active in the development and evaluation, via two randomized controlled trials, of a brief, postnatal, universal nurse home visiting program (Family Connects) that has demonstrated improved parenting and parental distress, as well as reduced emergency medical care costs and lower rates of reported child maltreatment. Since 2003, CCFH has been a community treatment and services center within the National Child Traumatic Stress Network focused on improving access to evidence based mental health care for foster care youth and developing trauma informed child welfare systems.


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