NURSE FAMILY PARTNERSHIP

Each year, more than 650,000 Medicaid-eligible women give birth for the first time. Nurse-Family Partnership helps communities implement a cost effective, evidence-based nurse home visitation program to improve pregnancy outcomes, chid health and development, and self-sufficiency for low-income, at-risk women who are pregnant for the first time - benefiting multiple generations.

Built upon the pioneering work of Professor David Olds, Nurse-Family Partnership's model is based on more than 30 years of evidence from randomized, controlled trials that prove it works; Beginning in the early 1970s, Dr. Olds initiated the development of a nurse home visitation program that targeted first-time mothers and their children. Over the next three decades, he and his colleagues continued to test the program in three separate, randomized, controlled trials with three different populations in Elmira, N.Y., Memphis, Tenn., and Denver, Colo.. The trials were designed to study the effects of the Nurse-Family Partnership model on maternal and child health, and child development, by comparing the short- and long-term outcomes of mothers and children enrolled in the Nurse-Family Partnership program to those of a control group of mothers and children not participating in the program.  Today, Olds and his team at The Prevention Research Center for Family and Child Health at the University of Colorado continue to study the model's long-term effects and lead research to continuously improve the Nurse-Family Partnership program model. Since 1979, more than 14 followup studies have been completed across the three trials, tracking program participants’ outcomes. The implementation of longitudinal studies enables Nurse-Family Partnership to measure the short- and long-term outcomes of the program. Although Nurse-Family Partnership maintains a close association with the Prevention Research Center, the two remain professionally independent; Trial outcomes demonstrate that Nurse-Family Partnership delivers against its three primary goals of better pregnancy outcomes, improved child health and development and increased economic self-sufficiency; making a measurable impact on the lives of children, families and the communities in which they live. For example, the following outcomes have been observed among participants in at least one of the trials of the program:

Improved Pregnancy Outcomes:
Improvement in women's prenatal health-79% reduction in preterm delivery for women who smoke, and reductions in high-risk pregnancies as a result of greater intervals between first and subsequent births

Improved Child Health and Development:
Reduction in criminal activity-59% reduction in child arrests at age 15

Reduction in injuries-39% fewer injuries among children; 56% reduction in emergency room visits for accidents and poisonings; 48% reduction in child abuse and neglect

Increase in children's school readiness-50% reduction in language delays of child age 21 months; 67% reduction in behavioral/intellectual problems at age six

Increased Economic Self-Sufficiency:
Fewer unintended subsequent pregnancies-32% fewer subsequent pregnancies

Increase in labor force participation by the mother-83% increase by the child's fourth birthday

Reduction in welfare use-20% reduction in months on welfare

Increase in father involvement-46% increase in father's presence in household

Reduction in criminal activity-60% fewer arrests of the mother; 72% fewer convictions of the mother