On April 2, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources held a hearing on the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program.
The Bush administration proposed and Congress enacted the MIECHV program in 2007. It required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “ensure that states use the funds to support [home visiting program] models that have been shown, in well-designed randomized controlled trials, to produce sizeable, sustained effects on important child outcomes, such as abuse and neglect,” according to Jon Baron, president, Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy. He added, “Similarly, the full MIECHV program, as proposed by President Obama and enacted by Congress in 2010, directs HHS to allocate at least 75 percent of the program’s funds to ‘evidence-based’ home visiting models. The full program uses a slightly different, but still rigorous, standard to determine what qualifies as evidence based.”
The Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) was one of the programs highlighted during the hearing. Crystal Towne, RN, NFP home visitor, Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, described the program, saying “NFP is a voluntary program that provides regular home visits to low-income, first-time mothers by registered nurses beginning early in pregnancy and continuing through the child’s second year of life. The program is free and voluntary to the women that enroll. The children and families NFP serves are young, living in poverty, and at the highest risk of experiencing significant health, educational and employment disparities that have a lasting impact on their lives, their families, and communities.” She added, “NFP nurses and their clients make a 2½ year commitment to one another, and develop a strong relationship over the course of 64 planned visits that focus on the strengths of the young mother and on her personal health, quality of care giving, and life course development. Their partnership with families is designed to help them achieve three major goals: 1) improve pregnancy outcomes; 2) improve child health and development; and 3) improve parents’ economic self-sufficiency. By achieving these program objectives, many of the major risks for poor health and social outcomes can be significantly reduced.”
The following witnesses also testified during the hearing:
