Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program
Evaluation (MIHOPE)
Informing the Future of Home Visiting
Introducing MIHOPE Strong Start
MIHOPE’s companion study, the Mother and Infant Home Visiting Program Evaluation–Strong Start (MIHOPE-Strong Start), is now recruiting sites. MIHOPE-Strong Start aims to determine whether home visiting programs improve birth- and health-related outcomes up to age one.
“By participating in the study, Healthy Families America sites will contribute to building the evidence base about HFA's benefits to families, strengthening the model, and ultimately helping families nationwide.”Cydney Wessel, |
MIHOPE-Strong Start will evaluate the effectiveness of two evidence-based home visiting models, Healthy Families America (HFA) and Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), at improving birth outcomes for women who are enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP. Both models have shown some evidence of improving birth outcomes in prior research, but there is much left to learn from this larger-scale study.
Approximately 78 local home visiting program sites offering HFA or NFP and clustered in 18 states will be selected to participate in MIHOPE-Strong Start. The study will have a sample size of 15,000 families with participants from a variety of communities across the country. The size and scope of the study provide a wonderful opportunity for home visiting programs to contribute information to the national debate about policies and practices designed to improve the well-being of at-risk families and children. Specifically, results of the study are expected to provide important input into the national discussion that could change Medicaid, CHIP, and other health insurance.
“The Nurse-Family Partnership is built upon three decades of longitudinal randomized controlled trials, and yet we have a responsibility to support its being tested well as it is replicated in an even broader range of communities throughout the world. The MIHOPE-Strong Start trial provides an important opportunity to determine the degree to which the NFP continues to produce impacts on outcomes of public health importance, and it will inform efforts to further strengthen the program. I strongly urge local NFP sites to participate in this important work.”Dr. David Olds, |
The MIHOPE-Strong Start study team is currently talking with states and sites, including those involved in MIHOPE, about participation. Study enrollment will continue into 2014. Data collected and analyzed for the study will be published in reports beginning in late 2013 and continuing through 2017. The study team, program models, and federal partners are enthusiastic about the unprecedented scale of MIHOPE-Strong Start and the opportunity it presents to inform funding for mother and infant home visiting services.
MIHOPE-Strong Start is funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in partnership with the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation and the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau. The evaluation is part of CMS’s Strong Start for Mothers and Newborns Initiative, which is funding three other types of prenatal interventions to provide better care, improved health, and reduced costs by improving birth outcomes.
More information about the project is available on the MIHOPE-Strong Start website. To learn about becoming a site, contact: Sharon Rowser (Sharon.Rowser@mdrc.org), Lauren Supplee (Lauren.Supplee@acf.hhs.gov), or Nancy Geyelin Margie (Nancy.Margie@acf.hhs.gov).
